Numerical Simulation And Experimental Investigation On Solidification Of Zn-Al Alloy

Zinc alloy, as an alternative material for copper, was paid more and more attention in recent years, but the temperature between solid-liquid phase of the Zinc alloy was large, especially for the Zinc alloy with high aluminum content, which makes the Shrinkage porosity and shrinkage cavity prone to happen during the casting, in the castings with large size, the situation became severe and limit its use in the engineering field. In this paper, zinc-aluminum alloy with the amount of 9% Al was used, casting process of the cylindrical alloy ingot with large diameter (114mm) was studied.1.The geometric and physical models of the metal mold casting process on cylindrical alloy ingot with large diameter was established, then the solidification process of the zinc alloy ingots was simulated by software Procast, temperature distribution during solidification was obtained, and the shrinkage porosity and volume fraction was predicted, the simulation result agree with the test.2. Based on numerical analysis, orthogonal test method was used to analyze the influence on the shrinkage of the ingot caused by different parameters such as casting temperature, different mold preheating temperature and surface heat transfer coefficient.3. In order to obtain zinc alloy ingots with good quality, impact of the machinery vibration and pressure on the crystallization of the metal was discussed, machinery vibration and pressure were used in the casting processes of zinc-aluminum alloy ingot in this paper. The mold which can withstand the pressure and vibration was made by ourselves. Different zinc-aluminum alloy ingots were obtained under the process of vibration, pressure and the combined process respectively4. In order to investigate effects of vibration and pressure on the quality of zinc-aluminum alloy, samples were got from the ingots for analysis, comparing with the samples from the normal casting, it could be concluded that the structure was refined under casting process with vibration and pressure and the mechanical properties were also improved; the tensile strength increased as the pressure increases; The performance of the alloy can be further improved by the combination of vibration and pressure, when the pressure reaches 1Mpa, the average tensile strength of zinc-aluminum alloy rose from a normal 175.63Mpa to 232.3Mpa, but as the pressure increased, the effect of vibration decreased.