CONSTITUTIVE MODELING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE FLOW BEHAVIOR OF SEMISOLID METAL ALLOY SLURRIES .1. THE FLOW RESPONSE

We present an internal variable constitutive model for semi-solid metal alloy slurries in this two-part paper. The first part discusses the constant internal structure flow equation and the second part derives the structure evolution equation. The model is valid for low (0.1) to moderate solid fractions (0.5-0.6). We also present a set of experiments on two alloy systems, Sn-15% Pb and Al-7% Si-0.6% Mg, performed on a computer controlled, high temperature Couette rheometer to determine the model parameters. We independently validate the internal variable model through separate, primarily hysteresis, experiments.