The aim of the present study was to understand and simulate the deformation behavior of a semi-solid during twin roll casting of aluminum alloys. AL-12 wt.% Cu alloy was used, this is directionally solidified and quenched to freeze the columnar dendrite structure. The structure was scanned and a simulation was created.
D. Fuloria and P. Lee (Imperial College London)
A sample of material, 6mm in diameter and 60mm in length was scanned in a commercial microtomography (XMT) unit, producing a 7.2µm voxel size image. A single Al dendrite was segmented out from the Al-Cu matrix using the semi-automated segmentation tools within ScanIP.
The segmented data was meshed using the +FE module in less than 5 minutes. The complex structure of a single Al dendrite was accurately represented, providing the basis for finite element simulation.
The deformation behaviour of the meshed dendrite structure was simulated using Abaqus by applying a compressive displacement of 25µm at the top face and fixing the bottom face. For this preliminary study, the dendrites were assumed to have the properties of pure aluminium.
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