Aluminum alloys are widely used in the industry thanks to its many advantages such as light weight and high strength. The use of this material in the market is increasing day by day with the developing technology. Due to the high energy inputs in the primary production, the use of secondary ingots by recycling from scrap material are more advantageous. However, the liquid metal quality is quite important in the use of secondary aluminum. It is believed that the quality of recycled aluminum is low, for this purpose, many liquid metal cleaning methods and test methods are used in the industry to assess the melt cleanliness level. In this study, it is aimed to examine the liquid metal quality in castings with varying temperature using K mold. A206 alloy was used, and the test parameters were selected as: (i) at 725 °C, 750 °C and 775 °C casting temperatures, (ii) different hydrogen levels. The hydrogen level was adjusted as low, medium and high with degassing, as_cast, and upgassing of the melt, respectively. The liquid metal quality of the cast samples was examined by the K mold technique. When the results were examined, it was determined that metal K values and the number of inclusions were high at the as-cast and up-gas liquid with increasing casting temperatures. It has been understood that the K mold technique is a practical method for the determination of liquid metal quality, if there is no reduced pressure test machine available at the foundry floor.
Turbulent filling of a mould is one of the ways to introduce extrinsic defects into the cast part that could deteriorate many properties of any casting. The turbulence can be easily eliminated by counter gravity casting. In gravity casting, tapered downsprue, tapered runner is needed such that the mould cavity is filled counter-gravity from the bottom which is the only best way to eliminate turbulence during filling. Tilt casting method also exists which has the potential to quiescently transfer the liquid into the mould cavity. In this work, gravity and tilt casting methods were used to evaluate the tensile properties of Nb grain refined 206 alloy. Three different Nb contents were investigated: 0.025, 0.05 and 0.1 wt% ratios and it was found that 0.05 wt% revealed the highest tensile properties. On the other hand, when the intrusion of surface folded oxides was eliminated during filling, it was found that mechanical properties were increased significantly, and particularly, the toughness was increased by two folds when tilt casting was applied compared to gravity casting.
In this work, 25 wheels were cast with three different grain refiners: Al5Ti1B, Al3Nb1B and MTS 1582. Samples were machined from the wheels to check the mechanical properties. It was found that Nb grain refinement had the lowest grain size (260 mm) and highest tensile properties (yield strength of 119-124 MPa and ultimate tensile strength of 190-209 MPa). Al5Ti1B and MTS 1582 revealed quite similar results (110 MPa yield and 198 MPa ultimate tensile strength). The fading of the grain refining effect of Al5TiB1 master alloy was observed in both Nb and Ti added castings whereas during the investigated time interval, the fading was not observed when MTS 1582 was used.
The solubility of Fe in aluminium alloys is known to be a problem in the casting of aluminium alloys. Due to the formation of various intermetallic phases, the mechanical properties decrease. Therefore, it is important to determine the formation mechanisms of such intermetallic. In this work, A360 alloy was used, and Fe additions were made. The alloy was cast into the sand and die moulds that consisted of three different thicknesses. In this way, the effect of the cooling rate was investigated. The holding time was selected to be 5 hours and every hour, a sample was collected from the melt for microstructural analysis. Additionally, the melt quality change was also examined by means of using a reduced pressure test where the bifilm index was measured. It was found that the iron content was increased after 2 hours of holding and the melt quality was decreased. There was a correlation between the duration and bifilm index. The size of Al-Si-Mn-Fe phases was increased in parallel with the bifilm content regardless of the iron content.
Production of the defect-free casting of aluminium alloys is the biggest challenge. Porosity is known to be the most important defect. Therefore, many cast parts are subjected to several non-destructive tests in order to check their acceptability. There are several standards, yet, the acceptance limit of porosity size and distribution may change according to the customer design and requirements. In this work, the aim was targeted to evaluate the effect of size, location, and distribution of pores on the tensile properties of cast A356 alloy. ANSYS software was used to perform stress analysis where the pore sizes were changed between 0.05 mm to 3 mm by 0.05 mm increments. Additionally, pore number was changed from 1 to 5 where they were placed at different locations in the test bar. Finally, bifilms were placed inside the pore at different sizes and orientations. The stress generated along the pores was recorded and compared with the fracture stress of the A356 alloy. It was found that as the bifilm size was getting smaller, their effect on tensile properties was lowered. On the other hand, as bifilms were larger, their orientation became the dominant factor in determining the fracture.
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