NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF AL-SI ALLOYS WITH AND WITHOUT A DIRECTIONAL SOLIDIFICATION

Numerical simulations are presented to analyze the influence of the casting process on the resulting strength of Strontium modified Al–Si alloys. A relationship is identified between the mechanical behavior and the different 3D morphologies of the eutectic silicon of the samples obtained by the die cast procedure and the directional solidification. It is shown that the mechanical behavior of the die cast alloy is isotropic in all three directions. In contrary, for the directional solidified alloy, the mechanical strength in the direction of the temperature gradient is higher than in the transverse direction. This fact has to be taken into account when analyzing structures issued from different casting processes. The volume meshes for the simulations are generated from experimental 3D FIB/SEM data sets. The influence of several levels of coarsening of the meshes as well as the order of the Lagrange element in the finite element setup are also analyzed