Modification of hypereutectic silumine by melt flow treatment with pulse electric current

Keywords

hypereutectic silumins, melt, structure, electric current, modification.

Cite as

Prygunova A. G., Petrov S. S., Koshelev M. V., Prygunov S. V., Zhydkov E. A., and Babiuk V. D. Modification of hypereutectic silumine by melt flow treatement with pulse electric current. Physicochemical Mechanics of Materials. 2026. 62(2), 114-121.

https://doi.org/10.15407/pcmm2026.02.114

Abstract

The features of modification of the hypereutectic Al–16.5 wt% Si alloy by treating the melt flow with a unipolar pulsed electric current of different density (j = 20–100 A/cm²) and frequency (f = 50–50000 Hz) were investigated. It was shown that the dispersion of structural components and impact toughness depend on the electric current modes and are described by the dependences that have extrema at f = 1000 Hz. With optimal processing parameters (j = 20 A/cm², f = 1000 Hz) and a cooling rate of 2°C/s, the size of the primary silicon particles decrease twice, while the branching of the Al–Si eutectic increases in more than 3 times. The structure becomes more homogeneous, pseudo-primary dendrites of the aluminium solid solution and silicon of a new modification (Siv) appear. The aluminium microhardness of the primary silicon crystals is almost halved with a proportional increase in the microhardness. Structural and phase transformations caused by such treatment provided an increase in the impact toughness of the alloy in more than 2.5 times, which indicates the prospects for using the proposed modification method in production.

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