Transgranular liquation cracking of grains in the semi-solid state

S. Karagadde, P. D. Lee (), B. Cai, J. L. Fife, M. A. Azeem, K. M. Kareh, C. Puncreobutr, D. Tsivoulas, T. Connolley and R. C. Atwood
Additional contact information
S. Karagadde: Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, The University of Manchester
P. D. Lee: Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, The University of Manchester
B. Cai: Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, The University of Manchester
J. L. Fife: Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut
M. A. Azeem: Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, The University of Manchester
K. M. Kareh: Imperial College London
C. Puncreobutr: Chulalongkorn University
D. Tsivoulas: Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, The University of Manchester
T. Connolley: Diamond Light Source Ltd, Harwell Science & Innovation Campus
R. C. Atwood: Diamond Light Source Ltd, Harwell Science & Innovation Campus

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Grain refinement via semi-solid deformation is desired to obtain superior mechanical properties of cast components. Using quantitative in situ synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy, we show an additional mechanism for the reduction of grain size, via liquation assisted transgranular cracking of semi-solid globular microstructures. Here we perform localized indentation of Al-15wt.%Cu globular microstructures, with an average grain size of ∼480 μm, at 555 °C (74% solid fraction). Although transgranular fracture has been observed in brittle materials, our results show transgranular fracture can also occur in metallic alloys in semi-solid state. This transgranular liquation cracking (TLC) occurs at very low contact stresses (between 1.1 and 38 MPa). With increasing strain, TLC continues to refine the size of the microstructure until the grain distribution reaches log-normal packing. The results demonstrate that this refinement, previously attributed to fragmentation of secondary arms by melt-shearing, is also controlled by an additional TLC mechanism.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9300 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9300

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9300

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().