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Microstructure and properties of squeeze cast A356 alloy processed with a

vibrating slope

Article  in  Journal of Materials Processing Technology · March 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2015.09.038

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 Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Microstructure and properties of squeeze cast A356 alloy processed

with a vibrating slope
R.G. Guan a,b,∗ , Z.Y. Zhao a , Y.D. Li b , T.J. Chen b , S.X. Xu c , P.X. Qi c
a
School of Materials and Metallurgy, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
b
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China
c
Suzhou Sanji Foundry Equipment Co. Ltd., Suzhou 2150000, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The microstructures of A356 alloy parts contained near-round or rosette ␣-Al grains and eutectics at
Received 27 March 2015 grain boundaries. Melt processing by vibrating slope could refine grain size and eliminate eutectic phase
Received in revised form segregation as well as regional segregation which usually occurred in traditional squeeze casting. Aver-
22 September 2015
age grain diameter of ␣-Al grain increased from 44 ␮m to 64 ␮m, and grain average roundness decreased
Accepted 23 September 2015
Available online 18 October 2015
firstly from 2.9 to 1.7 then increased to 3.3 with the increase of casting temperature. At casting tempera-
ture from 670 ◦ C to 680 ◦ C, crack and cooling shut usually occurred in the products due to poor flow ability
of the alloy. When the casting temperature was 690 ◦ C, the alloy had a good filling ability and smooth
Keywords:
Semisolid product with fine near-round or rosette ␣-Al grains and homogenous eutectics has been obtained. The
A356 alloy ultimate tensile strength and elongation of semisolid squeeze casting A356 alloy reached 232 MPa and
Squeeze casting 7%, which were improved by 12% and 21% respectively as comparing with that of traditional squeeze
Microstructure casting.
Properties © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction ultrasonic vibration method. Walmag et al. (2008) prepared the as-
cast steel (or high melting point alloy) with thixotropic properties
Semisolid metal forming is a preferable process to produce by hollow jet nozzle. Wang et al. (2010) studied the microstructural
metal part with complex structure for its good filling performance. evolution of AlSi7Mg alloys during electromagnetic stirring and
In addition, aluminum alloy part manufactured by semisolid pro- prepared the good slurry. Ahmad et al. (2014) reported that recip-
cessing has higher mechanical properties as comparing with liquid rocating injection screw could produce good thixotropic slurry,
metal forming, as reported by Flemings (1991). So semisolid pro- permanent magnet EMS could produce an intense stirring in
cessing attracts more and more attentions in the worldwide for semisolid alloy slurries and refine the microstructure. The results
manufacturing high performance part with complex structure. revealed that these methods could prepare slurries of alloys with
Meng et al. (2014) and Luo et al. (2010) reported that rheo- fine microstructure, and some of them were also successfully
forming is a type of short semisolid metal forming process, in which applied in production. However, these processes are relatively
semisolid slurry is deformed directly by rolling, extrusion and cast- complex and require accurate controlling of process parameters,
ing etc. The first key step of rheo-forming process is to prepare and the cost is also higher than conventional liquid forming pro-
semisolid slurry. Up to now, many successful preparing slurry pro- cess by Zoqui et al. (2002), Vieira et al. (2004), and Ghomashchi
cesses have been developed. Liu et al. (2011) and Brabazon et al. and Lashkari (2007). Developing low cost process of preparing
(2002) reported that mechanical stirring was successfully applied semisolid alloy is still a key target of semisolid metal forming. Hong
in production processes. Haghayeghia et al. (2010) developed con- and Kim (2006) reported that New Rheocasting was firstly devel-
ditioner direct chill (MCDC) casting and prepared 7075 alloy with oped by UBE Company in Japan. In this process, a cooling slope
fine microstructure. Wannasin et al. (2006) developed gas bub- was used for casting. Liquid alloy was poured onto the slope, and
bles and achieved grain refinement during solidification. Lü et al. semisolid alloy could be prepared under the actions of slope cool-
(2012) prepared excellent semisolid slurry of A356 alloy by indirect ing and metal flow. Haga (2002), Haga and Suzuki (2003) and Haga
et al. (2004) have installed a sloping plate device onto a roll casting
mill to develop the semisolid rolling process, and the mechanical
∗ Corresponding author. properties of the strip prepared by semisolid rolling were obvi-
E-mail address: [email protected] (R.G. Guan). ously improved simultaneously as comparing with casting alloy.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2015.09.038
0924-0136/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 R.G. Guan et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519 515

Fig. 1. Self-designed semisolid squeeze casting setup and the product of A356 alloy (A and B are sampling positions for microstructure observation, C and D are sampling
positions for tensile test).

Based on the above work, in order to avoid slurry adhesion on the observation was carried out under OLYMPUS DSX500 metallo-
slope surface and improve slurry quality, Guan et al. (2009, 2012) graphic microscope. Phase analysis was also accomplished under
applied vibration on the slope, and combined vibrating slope pro- Ultra Plus SEM. The primary ␣-Al grain diameter was calculated by
cess and semisolid rolling process, the mechanical properties of using the following equation,
the strip obtained by the process were significantly improved. In
LT
this paper, in order to develop low-cost semisolid squeeze casting d=
N×n
process for producing complex alloy part with high performance, a
self-designed vibrating slope device and squeeze casting machine where d is grain diameter, LT is length of measure line, N is grain
were combined organically for the first time to study semisolid number that is covered by the measure line, and n is magnification.
squeeze casting of A356 alloy. In order to evaluate the feasibility The average roundness of ␣-Al grain was calculated by,
of the application of melt processing by vibrating slope on squeeze
casting and guide the study of semisolid squeeze casting process, LP2
SF =
effect of melt processing by vibrating slope on microstructure and 4␲A
properties of squeeze casting A356 alloy were investigated. where SF is grain roundness, Lp is the total circumference of mea-
sured grains, and A is total grain areas. Mechanical properties
2. Experimental procedure of A356 alloy parts were measured by using a CMT5105 tensile
machine. The sampling positions are shown in Fig. 1b. The length of
The experimental material was commercial A356 alloy whose the tensile samples is 55 mm, and the thickness is 2 mm, as shown
main chemical compositions (mass%) are Si 7.00, Mg 0.43, Fe 0.19, in Fig. 2. The stretching was carried out under the tensile rate of
and Al balanced. The liquidus and solidus of the alloy are 615 ◦ C and 2 mm/min.
577 ◦ C respectively. As shown in Fig. 1a, the experimental device
was a self-designed semisolid squeeze casting setup that was built
3. Results and discussion
through the combination of squeeze casting machine and vibrat-
ing slope device. The squeeze pressure of the machine can reach
3.1. Effect of melt processing
140 MPa. The alloy was melt in a furnace with the capacity of 200 kg.
The melt was heated to 720 ◦ C and then poured onto the surface of
Fig. 3 shows comparison of microstructures of A356 alloy parts
the vibrating sloping plate at 670 ◦ C–700 ◦ C, thus the alloy flowed
obtained by traditional squeeze casting and semisolid squeeze cast-
through the slope and filled into the squeeze barrel under grav-
ing. The microstructures contain ␣-Al grains and dark structures
ity. The slurry with fine rosette or near-round primary grains and
at grain boundaries. Fig. 4 shows SEM analysis result of dark area
residual liquids were prepared due to cooling, vibration and melt
in Fig. 3, it reveals that the dark area mainly contains rich Si and
flow, subsequently, the slurry in the barrel was directly squeezed
Mg elements. Haghshenas et al. (2009) reported that A356 alloy
into product under pressure. The target product with the weight
mainly contains Mg2 Si and Si eutectic phases at grain boundaries, so
of 2 kg is shown in Fig. 1b. Traditional squeeze casting at cast-
these dark structures can be determined as the same phases. These
ing temperature 700 ◦ C was also carried out for comparison with
phases with homogenous distributions can effectively strengthen
semisolid squeeze casting. As shown in Fig. 1b, samples were taken
alloy through pinning dislocations but its segregation can worsen
from different positions A and B for microstructure observation
mechanical properties. High casting temperature and rapid solidi-
and phase analysis. Each sample was roughly ground, polished and
fication usually cause large eutectic phase segregation.
etched by a solution with 0.5% HF and H2 O, and then microstructure
From Fig. 3, it can be found that traditional squeeze casting
alloy is composed of big dendrites or nets and large-area eutectic
phase segregation, this kind of microstructure would be harmful to
mechanical properties. During traditional squeeze casting, liquid
metal was adopted. The forming die had a high heat conductivity,
which led to a big temperature gradient, so coarse dendrites gen-
erated in the alloy. At the same time, eutectic phase could solidify
rapidly because of high cooling rate. As a result, the eutectic phase
segregation was formed. In addition, the regional segregation also
occurred in the product. It can be seen that second dendritic arm
at position B is much bigger than that at position A, but eutec-
Fig. 2. The dimensions of specimens for tensile testing (mm). tic phase segregation at position B is relatively less than that at
516 R.G. Guan et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519

Fig. 3. Comparison of microstructures of A356 alloy parts obtained by traditional squeeze casting and semisolid squeeze casting.

position A. The reason is that the filling route of these positions were remained in the die. In addition, semisolid alloy had a rela-
are different, which lead to different cooling rate and solidification tive higher solid fraction than liquid alloy, so the cooling speed of
speed. Filling mouth is close to position B. The alloy temperature the alloy in the die was reduced at the second solidification stage,
was higher and the die temperature was lower at position A, so and the solidification in the die was much closer to equilibrium
cooling rate at position A was much bigger than that at position solidification, thus eutectic phase segregation was avoided.
B, which resulted to relative faster solidification speed at position
A than at position B. Consequently, relative smaller second den-
dritic arms but larger eutectic phase segregation was remained at 3.2. Effect of casting temperature
position A.
However, it is found that the microstructures of A356 alloy Fig. 5 shows the products obtained by semisolid squeeze casting
part produced by semisolid squeeze casting at different zones of at different casting temperatures. It can be seen when the casting
A and B are all composed of rosette or near-round ␣-Al grains and temperature was from 690 ◦ C to 700 ◦ C, semisolid alloy prepared by
eutectics. Grain size of semisolid squeeze casting is much smaller vibrating slope processing had good flow ability and could fill the
than that of traditional squeeze casting. Both ␣-Al grains and die well, and good product with smooth surface has been obtained.
eutectics in semisolid squeeze casting distribute homogenously. However, when the casting temperature was below 690 ◦ C, the
Microstructures at both positions almost have no difference, and alloy flow ability became worse, in this situation, even it could
the variations of grain shape and size are not obvious, moreover, flow down the slope, forming die could not be filled completely,
eutectic phase segregation is not found, which reveals that melt which resulted in incomplete product, and crack as well as cold
processing by vibrating slope could obviously refine grain size and shut usually occurred, as shown in Fig. 5a and b. So experimental
eliminate eutectic phase segregation as well as regional segregation results suggest that semisolid casting temperature should be set
which usually occurred in traditional squeeze casting. Semisolid from 690 ◦ C to 700 ◦ C in this case.
squeeze casting process included two solidification stages, the first Fig. 6 shows microstructures of semisolid squeeze casting part
solidification stage occurred on the slope surface and the second at position A under different casting temperatures. Fig. 7 is the
solidification stage was in the die. Guan et al. (2009) reveal that the variations of average grain roundness and diameter with casting
alloy processed by vibrating slope process was usually composed temperature. It can be found that ␣-Al grain almost kept near-round
of near-round primary grains and remnant liquid, and a large quan- or rosette shape under different casting temperatures. But aver-
tity of nuclei induced by vibrating, flow and cooling on the slope age ␣-Al grain diameter has a slight increase from 44 ␮m to 50 ␮m
contributed to semisolid slurry formation. Fine near-round grains with casting temperature from 670 ◦ C to 690 ◦ C, and the increment
becomes obvious when casting temperature is higher than 690 ◦ C.

Fig. 4. SEM analysis of dark areas in Fig. 3 which mainly contains rich Si and Mg elements.
 R.G. Guan et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519 517

Fig. 5. Products obtained by semisolid squeeze casting at different casting temperatures. (a) 670 ◦ C (b) 680 ◦ C (c) 690 ◦ C (d) 700 ◦ C

The reason is that semisolid alloy at high temperature could provide ing process. The first stage is the solidification period on the sloping
adequate liquid for primary grain or nuclei growing into large grains plate, and the second stage is the solidification process in the
in the die. Ahmad et al. (2014) also found that molten aluminum forming die. Microstructure formation mechanism in the first stage
A356 was poured into metallic copper tube molds and cooled down was studied by Guan et al. (2012). It was believed that near-round
to the semi-solid temperature before being quenched in water at grain formation derived from a large number of heterogeneous
room temperature, the microstructure was more spherical when nuclei that formed on the slope surface and escaped into the melt
lower pouring temperatures of A356 alloy. under metal flow and vibration. Alloy flow ability became better
From Figs. 6 and 7, it also can be found that grain roundness is not with the increase of casting temperature from 670 ◦ C to 690 ◦ C, so
a constant value, and it decreases from 2.9 to 1.7 and then increases the quantity of nuclei that were flushed by alloy flow and vibration
to 3.3 with the increase of casting temperature. As mentioned was improved; hence, grain roundness decreases with the increase
above, there are two solidification stages in semisolid squeeze cast- of casting temperature from 670 ◦ C to 690 ◦ C. But if casting temper-

Fig. 6. Microstructures of semisolid squeeze casting part at position A under different casting temperatures. (a) 670 ◦ C (b) 680 ◦ C (c) 690 ◦ C (d) 700 ◦ C
518 R.G. Guan et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519

Fig. 7. Variations of average grain roundness and diameter with casting tempera-
ture.
Fig. 9. Properties of semisolid squeeze casting A356 alloy at different casting tem-
peratures.
ature was over 690 ◦ C, undercooling in the alloy formed on the slope
surface was smaller due to high superheat, and fewer nuclei was with the increase of casting temperature from 670 ◦ C to 690 ◦ C and
formed, which resulted much bigger grain roundness and diameter, then decrease with further increasing of casting temperature. As
as shown in Fig. 6d and Fig. 7. mentioned above, when the casting temperature was below 690 ◦ C,
Fig. 8 shows variation of the fraction of eutectic phase with solidification defects occurred due to poor flow ability of the alloy.
casting temperature. It can be found that the fraction of eutectic Even though the grain size decreased and eutectic phase became
phase increases with the increase of casting temperature. When homogenous with the decrease of casting temperature from 690 ◦ C
the casting temperature was 700 ◦ C, even slight eutectic phase seg- to 670 ◦ C, casting defects obviously reduced alloy mechanical prop-
regation appeared. This behavior was derived from relative faster erties. Alloy flow ability increased and casting defects were reduced
solidification speed induced by big thermal gradient due to high with the increase of casting temperature, so mechanical properties
casting temperature. When casting temperature was high, the liq- of the alloy were improved correspondingly. Once casting temper-
uid fraction of semisolid slurry was also high. Hence, more liquid ature was over 690 ◦ C, casting defects became much less, in this
phases flowed into forming die. After solidification, more eutectic situation, microstructure became the main factor that determined
microstructures formed in the product due to faster solidification. alloy’s mechanical properties. Since grain diameter of the prod-
Eutectic phase segregation usually reduces plasticity of the alloy uct obtained at casting temperature 700 ◦ C is bigger than that at
and leads to fracture during service, so it is very important to con- 690 ◦ C, and the eutectic phase segregation at casting temperature
trol the distribution of eutectic phase. As far as the present study is 700 ◦ C was also severer than that at 690 ◦ C, the ultimate tensile
concerned, casting temperature from 670 ◦ C to 690 ◦ C is reasonable strength and elongation of the product at casting temperature
for obtaining homogenous distribution of eutectic phase. Fine and 700 ◦ C are lower than that at 690 ◦ C. So comprehensively consider-
near-round grains can be obtained simultaneously. ing the above factors, the reasonable casting temperature 690 ◦ C is
suggested.
3.3. Properties of A356 alloy When casting temperature was 690 ◦ C, the alloy had a good fill-
ing ability and smooth product with fine near-round or rosette
Fig. 9 shows the properties of semisolid squeeze casting A356 ␣-Al grains and homogenous eutectics has been obtained. Fig. 10
alloy at different casting temperatures. It is found that the ulti- shows the ultimate tensile strengths and elongations to failure of
mate tensile strength as well as elongation of the alloy increase A356 alloy parts that were produced by different squeeze cast-

Fig. 10. Ultimate tensile strengths and elongations to failure of A356 alloy parts that
Fig. 8. Variation of the fraction of eutectic phase with casting temperature. were produced by different squeeze casting methods.
 R.G. Guan et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 229 (2016) 514–519 519

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Lü, S., Wu, S., Dai, W., Lin, C., An, P., 2012. The indirect ultrasonic vibration process
gation which usually occurred in traditional squeeze casting. for rheo-squeeze casting of A356 aluminum alloy. J. Mater. Process. Technol.
(2.) Average grain diameter of ␣-Al grain increases from 44 ␮m to 212, 1281–1287.
Meng, Y., Sugiyama, S., Tan, J., Yanagimoto, J., 2014. Effects of forming conditions
64 ␮m, and average grain roundness decreases firstly from 2.9
on homogeneity of microstructure and mechanical properties of A6061
to 1.7 then increases to 3.3 with the increase of casting temper- aluminum alloy manufactured by time-dependent rheoforging on a
ature. The reasonable casting temperature 690 ◦ C is suggested. mechanical servo press. J. Mater. Process. Technol. 214,
(3.) The ultimate tensile strength and elongation of semisolid 3037–3047.
Vieira, E.A., Kliauga, A.M., Ferrante, M., 2004. Microstructural evolution and
squeeze casting A356 alloy reach 232 MPa and 7% and they rheological behaviour of aluminium alloys A356, and A356 + 0.5% Sn designed
were improved by 12% and 21%, respectively as compared with for thixocasting. J. Mater. Process. Technol. 155-156, 1623–1628.
that of traditional squeeze casting. Walmag, G., Walmag, G., Naveau, P., Rassili, A., Sinnaeve, M., 2008. A new
processing route for as-cast thixotropic steel. Diffus. Defect Date Part B (Solid
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Acknowledgements Wannasin, J., Martinez, R.A., Flemings, M.C., 2006. Grain refinement of an
aluminum alloy by introducing gas bubbles during solidification. Scripta
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The authors thank for the supports of National Natural Science Zoqui, E.J., Shehata, M.T., Paes, M., Kao, V., Es-Sadiqi, E., 2002. Morphological
Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars of China under Grant evolution of SSM A356 during partial remelting. Mater. Sci. Eng. A 325, 38–53.
no. 51222405 and National Natural Science Foundation of China Wang, J., Li, P., Mi, G., 2010. Yuexian Zhong Microstructural evolution caused by
electromagnetic stirring in superheated AlSi7Mg alloys. J. Mater. Process.
under Grant no. 51474063. Technol. 210, 1652–1659.

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