Experimental investigation and thermodynamic analysis of glass forming ability of the Al–Co–Sm ternary system

Based on an effective atomic radius instead of a nominal atomic radius in the efficient atomic packing cluster method, the best glass forming composition in the new Al–Co–Sm ternary system was forecasted. Thermodynamic description of the Al-rich corner of Al–Co–Sm system was performed using the CALPHAD approach. Results show that the effective atomic radii of Sm and Al are approximately equal to the nominal radii, but the effective atomic radius of Co atom is obviously smaller than its nominal radius. From thermodynamic calculation, the composition dependencies of glass forming ability (GFA) in the Al-rich corner of the system were forecasted by finding the relatively low driving forces for crystalline phases, and the forecast of GFA agrees well with the experimental data.