Kinetics of coarsening and solid sphericity during reheating of ductile iron and Al alloys

Reheating process in the semi-solid state is a very important step in the thixoforming process. In this research semi-solid ductile cast iron and Al alloys (Al-2.5Si, Al356) prepared by inclined plate method, were reheated to examine the effect of reheating conditions on the microstructure and coarsening kinetics of the alloys. For ductile cast iron, solid fraction at different reheating temperatures and holding times was obtained and based on these results the optimum reheating temperature range was determined. In the case of Al alloys increase of holding time in the semi-solid state, leads to increase of liquid fraction, solid grain size and improvement of sphericity of solid particles. In addition, the results show that coarsening kinetics of microstructures of both alloys during reheating was diffusion controlled and can be mostly treated by Ostwald ripening theory.