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Research Strengthening the Project of Faculty of Engineering, KMUTT year 2563; Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI) under Fundamental Fund 2022.

Billets from an AA4032 alloy are usually produced by direct-chill (DC) casting to subsequently manufacture piston components by hot forging process. This work presents the effect of combined copper (Cu) and erbium (Er) addition on microstructure, mechanical properties and thermal expansion of an AA4032 alloy at room and elevated temperatures. Metallographic examination of samples was carried out to characterize the eutectic refinement, primary Si particles and second phase formation at different levels of Cu and Er additions. The results revealed that the amount of primary Si particles increased with increasing Cu addition from 1% to 3.5%. This indicated that Cu addition shifted the eutectic point in the alloy system. However, the Er addition resulted in complete elimination of primary Si particles and refinement of eutectic silicon phases. These results were supported by Thermo-Calc calculations. With increasing Cu and Er concentration to 3.5% and 0.4%, respectively, the hardness increased from 116 HB to 144 HB. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS), yield strength (YS) and elongation (El) were investigated at both room and elevated temperatures. At room temperature, the UTS of these alloys were enhanced with Cu and Er alloying from 279 MPa to 312 MPa. At 350 °C, the UTS was improved to 117 MPa while El was maintained at about 22%. This indicated that Er addition was effective in optimizing the high-temperature properties. The tensile fracture surfaces of the specimens showed that the main failure mechanism was predominantly due to the cracking of primary Si particles in the Al matrix, resulting in the brittle fracture of the alloys without Er. The fracture surface of the samples with Er addition displayed the path through the refined eutectic phase in the ductile fracture mode. The coefficient of linear thermal expansion (CTE) decreased to about 18.3 × 10−6 K−1 at high operating temperature (100–350 °C) for the Er containing alloy. Therefore, this study suggests that the combination of Cu and Er additions in an AA4032 alloy controls the beneficial microstructure in terms of primary Si particles, the refined eutectic Si phase and secondary phases in the Al matrix, which improves mechanical and thermal performances. The low coefficient of linear thermal expansion (CTE) of this alloy makes it suitable for elevated temperature applications.

Al-Fe-Ni eutectic alloys has high potential for being alternative aluminum alloys for various electronic and electrical applications instead of conventional low-conductivity Al casting alloys. Furthermore, the addition of Zr and Sc up to 0.3-0.6 wt% improves the hardness for high temperature applications, which is a result of the finer Al-Fe-Ni eutectic structure, and precipitation hardening of Al3Zr and/or Al3Sc nanoprecipitates. Thus, the aim of the present contribution is to analyze the microstructure features changes in an Al-1.75Fe-1.25Ni eutectic alloy upon different cooling rates during solidification. The features of Al-Fe-Ni eutectics and intermetallics were studied quantitatively, and the mechanical properties and electrical conductivity were measured. Faculty of Engineering at KMUTT (Strong Research Initiative 2020); EPSRC (UK) project UltraMelt2 (EP/R011095/1).

© 2020 The Author(s). Hypereutectic Al–Fe and Al–Ni alloys offer a potentially attractive combination of properties, e.g. high-temperature strength and stability, high elastic modulus and low coefficient of thermal expansion. This potential, however, cannot be reached unless the structure of these alloys is refined so that their processing becomes possible. In this study, we for the first time apply ultrasonic melt processing for refining the structure of hypereutectic Al-4% Fe and Al-8% Ni alloys with 0.3 wt% Zr addition. Both primary Al3Fe and Al3Ni particles as well as aluminum/eutectic grains are significantly refined. It is suggested that cavitation-induced fragmentation of primary Al3Zr crystals plays a significant role in the nucleation of intermetallics as well as aluminum. Furthermore, the hardness and tensile properties of the alloys substantially increase after ultrasonic treatment due to the refined structure, which also contributes to the considerably enhanced ductility of the alloys. As a result, the fracture mode changes from brittle fracture to ductile fracture. The increase in ductility makes the alloys suitable for hot deformation, which is demonstrated by lab-scale hot rolling. In addition, precipitation hardening of the alloys can be achieved by high-temperature annealing at 450 °C due to retained Zr in the Al solid solution upon solidification. The results are supported by the analysis of the composition of a supersaturated solid solution of Zr in Al and scanning and transmission electron microscopy that confirms the precipitation of coherent Al3Zr nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that a combination of ultrasonic melt processing and alloying with Zr makes it feasible to develop new class of hypereutectic casting and wrought alloys based on the Al–Fe and Al–Ni systems. King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT 55th Anniversary Commemorative Fund); EPSRC (UK) under project UltraMelt2 (EP/R011001/1, EP/R011044/1 and EP/R011095/1).

© The Author(s) 2019. Piston Al-Si alloys have very complex compositions and multi-phase heterogeneous structure, so it is necessary to control the formation of primary and eutectic compounds. In this study, the ultrasonic melt processing (USP) of a eutectic Al-Si piston alloy (AA4032-type) was performed in a permanent mold and during direct-chill (DC) casting to study its effects on the structure refinement and modification. The principal difference between these two ways of casting is that in the permanent mold the solidification front progressively moves towards the ultrasound source, while in the DC casting the position of the solidification front is fixed in space. The results showed that the USP can successfully refine primary Si, Fe-containing intermetallics and aluminum grains. Refinement of primary Si was accompanied by the increase in its amount, which was attributed to both enhanced heterogeneous nucleation and fragmentation. The refinement of Fe-containing intermetallics and Al grains resulted from the fragmentation mechanism and were more pronounced when USP was applied below the liquidus temperature in the permanent mold. However, the eutectic phases coarsened upon USP, and this effect was most pronounced when USP was applied to the semi-solid material. This was related to the strong attenuation of acoustic waves, which effectively heats the semi-solid material and induces corresponding coarsening of the phases. Acoustic streaming induced by an oscillating sonotrode affected the depth of the sump while simultaneously decreasing the macrosegregation, which reflects the dominant role of the melt flow directed against natural convection. The results demonstrated the importance of the solidification stage at which the USP was applied and the specifics of the USP mechanisms acting at the different stages of solidification. King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (“KMUTT 55th Anniversary Commemorative Fund” postdoctoral fellowship); EPSRC (UK) Project UltraMelt2 (EP/R011001/1, EP/R011044/1, and EP/R011095/1).

In the present study, aluminum alloys of the Al-Mg system with titanium diboride particles of different size distribution were obtained. The introduction of particles in the alloy was carried out using master alloys obtained through self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) process. The master alloys consisted of the intermetallic matrix Al-Ti with distributed TiB2 particles. The master alloys with TiB2 particles of different size distribution were introduced in the melt with simultaneous ultrasonic treatment, which allowed the grain refining of the aluminum alloy during subsequent solidification. It was found that the introduction of micro- and nanoparticles TiB2 increased the yield strength, tensile strength, and plasticity of as-cast aluminum alloys. After pass rolling the castings and subsequent annealing, the effect of the presence of particles on the increase of strength properties is much less felt, as compared with the initial alloy. The recrystallization of the structure after pass rolling and annealing was the major contributor to hardening that minimized the effect of dispersion hardening due to the low content of nanosized titanium diboride. Russian Science Foundation; The Research and Researchers for Industry (RRi) under the Thailand Research Fund

Aluminum piston alloys of the AA4032 type are produced by direct-chill (DC) casting and subsequent forging; therefore, it is important to understand their thermomechanical behavior. In recent years, it was shown that additions of Cu and Er could improve mechanical properties of these alloys at room and high temperatures. In this work, we studied the constitutive behavior of AA4032-type alloys with and without Cu and Er additions. The experimental true stress–true strain curves were obtained by compression tests under various temperatures [683 K to 723 K (410 °C to 450 °C)] and strain rates (0.01 to 10 s−1) to determine constitutive parameters [strain-rate sensitivity, activation energy, and Zener–Hollomon (Z) parameter] for the hot deformation behavior of AA4032-type piston alloys with and without additions of Cu and Er. The flow stress decreased with increasing deformation temperature and decreasing strain rate. The results also showed that increasing the Cu content increased the flow stress over the applied range of deformation conditions due to solid-solution strengthening and the formation of primary Si particles, which led to an increase in the activation energy during hot deformation. Moreover, the main microstructural damage in the AA4032 alloy with 3.5 pct Cu was predominantly due to the cracking of primary Si particles. Additions of 0.4 pct Er and 3.5 pct Cu lower the activation energy of deformation, Q, as compared to the base alloy and the alloy with 3.5 pct Cu. The microstructures in the deformed specimens consisted of subgrains, recrystallized grains, and fine eutectic phases. The alloys containing Er demonstrated more polygonized grains at a low strain rate than the alloys without Er, indicating that Er hindered recrystallization development. The peak stress of the AA4032 alloy with 3.5 pct Cu alloy was higher than for the base AA4032 alloy and for the AA4032 alloy with 3.5 pct Cu and 0.4 pct Er additions, which was attributed to the prevalence of the work-hardening mechanism over the softening mechanism.

Piston Al-Si alloys are widely used for high-temperature applications especially in automotive industry. Copper is one of the most important elements for improving the strength at room and elevated temperatures. Other effects of Cu addition need to be taken into account as well, i.e. the changes in microstructure and the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). We studied the effects of Cu addition to an AA4032 piston alloy on its structure and properties. Thermal analysis, metallography, thermodynamic calculations, hardness, tensile and dilatometer tests were conducted. The results showed that increased Cu addition promoted the formation of primary Si particles in this Al-Si alloy and enlarged its solidification range. The increase of Cu concentration from 1 to 3.5 wt% improves hardness, tensile properties, and CTE of the near-eutectic Al-Si alloys. This work contributes to deeper understanding the role of Cu in Al-Si piston alloys.