Metallurgical factors affecting impact toughness of eutectic Al-Si casting alloy

Impact toughness of eutectic Al-Si casting alloy is evaluated with the objective of investigating the metallurgical factors affecting this property. The metallurgical factors such as eutectic Si size, aspect ratio, shape factor and Si particles spacing are picked up. Thus, the relationship between the impact toughness and the microstructure is established. Impact toughness is found to be strongly affected by the size and morphology of eutectic Si particles. Other feature which greatly influences the impact toughness is the ratio of the silicon particles spacing normalized to the equivalent diameter, rather than the Si particles spacing. Impact toughness also correlate well with the void growth parameter proposed by the authors.