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Thixoforming : Semi-solid Metal Processing

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5<br />

Thermochemical Simulation of Phase Formation<br />

Bengt Hallstedt and Jochen M. Schneider<br />

5.1<br />

Methods and Objectives<br />

5.1.1<br />

General<br />

In this chapter, we will explore the use of thermochemical simulation methods to<br />

support alloy selection and processing in the semi-<strong>solid</strong> state. Alloy selection is<br />

discussed more in detail in Chapters 2–4. <strong>Processing</strong>-related issues are discussed<br />

in detail in Chapters 9 and 11. The use of thermochemical simulation for alloy<br />

selection has also been treated in, for example, [1–4]. The focus at RWTH over the last<br />

few years has been on semi-<strong>solid</strong> processing of steels and, therefore, only steels will be<br />

discussed here. The steels of main interest here are the relatively high-carbon steels<br />

X210CrW12 and 100Cr6. Their compositions are given in Table 5.1. A key property for<br />

semi-<strong>solid</strong> processing is the fraction of the liquid phase as a function of temperature<br />

(and possibly time), and this will be dealt with in some detail. It is necessary to know<br />

the fraction of liquid phase in order to be able to control the process and in order to<br />

simulate the viscous flow during various forming operations (Chapters 6 and 7). It is<br />

possible to determine the fraction of liquid phase experimentally using, for example,<br />

differential thermal analysis (DTA) or metallography (more details are given in<br />

Chapter 3), but this is far from trivial [5]. The approach used here is to calculate the<br />

fraction of liquid phase from thermodynamic (and sometimes diffusion) data.<br />

If the thermodynamic properties of a system are known, then any phase diagram<br />

can be calculated. This is illustrated in Figure 5.1, which also shows that the<br />

thermodynamic description actually contains much more information than the<br />

phase diagram alone, since the thermodynamic properties of the included phases<br />

are defined for the complete composition range, and not only for the range where they<br />

are stable. Not only the stable phase diagram, as shown in Figure 5.1, and any<br />

thermodynamic property of the stable state, but also any metastable state can be<br />

A List of Abbreviations and Symbols can be found<br />

at the end of this chapter.<br />

j147

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