Real time observation of dendritic solidification in alloys by synchrotron microradiography

A third generation synchrotron x-ray source and advanced imaging facilities were used to study dendritic solidification in metallic alloys in real time. A digital camera and a video camera with different time and spatial resolution were tested to capture growing dendrites during solidification of Sn-13 wt% Bi and Al-25 wt% Cu alloys. The captured digital images show that the morphology of the dendrites can be resolved with satisfactory resolution and contrast. The trade-off between spatial resolution and time resolution was discussed. The effect of beam characteristics such as intensity, parallelism and coherency on both spatial and time resolution was analysed, and potential improvements with higher image quality with reduced exposure time were also discussed.