DEVELOPMENT OF HOT TEARING EVALUATION METHOD FOR Al-BASED ALLOYS

This paper focuses on developing an advanced test method and its use to study hot tearing defects in aluminium alloy castings. The paper consists of two parts. The first part introduces the reader to hot tearing in general, and provides theoretical analysis of the hot tearing phenomenon. The second part describes a newly developed method for assessing hot tearing susceptibility, and also gives the results on hot tearing for various aluminium alloys. During the test, the effect of alloy chemical composition on hot tearing susceptibility was analyzed. Three different Al-based alloys with varying Si, Cu and Ti contents were examined. Conclusions deal with the effect of individual elements on hot tearing susceptibility, and confirm that the main objective was achieved and the proposed method proves to be repeatable and reliable.