Microstructural Characterization of Rapidly Solidified Al-High Si Alloys

Abstract

Aluminium silicon alloys are the most used raw material for automotive applications. One of the main limitations on using aluminium high silicon alloys is the formation of coarse brittle phases under conventional solidification conditions. However, rapid solidification processing (RS) (for example, through melt spinning) is very effective in limiting the coarsening of primary silicon due to the high cooling rate. In the present work, characterisation of the material at the first stage of production as melt-spun ribbon and flake has been carried out. The microstructures show typical characteristics of a ‘featureless zone’ on the wheel-side and coarser microstructures on the air-side, with clusters of silicon particles evident. At high magnification, on the wheel-side, TEM and FEGSEM reveal local variations in the silicon and aluminium content (although on average there is no macrosegregation from the wheel-side to the air-side during solidification). In FEGSEM, the ‘rosette-structure’ also displays local variations in Al, Si, Fe, Cu and Ni over a scale of a few microns.