Microstructure and Hardness Property of Thixoformed A356 by Means of Cooling Slope Route

  • M. Samsudin, M.Z. Omar, S. Abdullah

Abstract

Thixoforming is an advanced technology that able to produce non-dendritic alloys for the semisolid forming of complex-shaped parts in metal alloys. The method of thixoforming is heated a feedstock at semisolid temperature until it reached thixotropic condition, then pressed within mould. The feedstock is a solid billet that prepared from cooling slope casting (CS) or known as CS route. This route was chosen due to inexpensive cost and able to modified microstructure from dendrite to rosettes shape and globular α-Al primary particles. Moreover, the size of α-Al primary particles is less than 100µm that fulfilled the requirement for thixoforming process. Hardness property and microstructure observation of thixoformed A356 alloy from CS route were investigated in this paper. The feedstock was reheated to 585°C at 51% of solid fraction and within 10 min. approximately the thixotropic feedstock was pressed within mold to produce near net shape part. This part was reduced by 30% reduction of cross section. The hardness property of the thixoformed part was significantly improved. The improvement was attributed to morphological aspects of the silicon phase, as well as spheroids and uniform primary α-Al particles with non-dendritic structure produced.

Published
2020-06-01
How to Cite
M. Samsudin, M.Z. Omar, S. Abdullah. (2020). Microstructure and Hardness Property of Thixoformed A356 by Means of Cooling Slope Route . International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, 29(8s), 4380-4386. Retrieved from http://sersc.org/journals/index.php/IJAST/article/view/25477