Rapid eutectic growth of Sb-24%Cu alloy is realized in the drop tube during the free fall under the con-tainerless condition. Based on the analysis of crystal nuclea-tion and eutectic growth in the free fall condition, it is indicated that, with the increase of undercooling, microstruc-tural transition of Sb-24%Cu eutectic alloy proceeds from lamellar to anomalous eutectic structure. Undercoolings of 0 -154 K have been obtained in experiment. The maximum undercooling exceeds to 0.19TE. Calculated results exhibit that Cu2Sb compound is the primary nucleation phase, and that the primary Sb dendrite will grow more rapidly than the eutectic structure when undercooling is larger than 40 K. The eutectic coupled zone around Sb-24%Cu eutectic alloy leads strongly to the Cu-rich side and covers a composition range from 23.0% to 32.7%Sb.
Droplets of Co-37.6 wt pct Mo and Ni-47.7 wt pct Mo eutectic alloys were rapidly solidified during containerless processing in a 3 m drop tube. A kind of anomalous eutectic appears in these two eutectic alloys when undercooling is beyond 56 and 61 K, respectively. The two eutectic phases in anomalous eutectic were observed to grow in dendrite manner. The formation of anomalous eutectic is ascribed to the cooperative dendrite growth of the two independently nucleated eutectic phases. Current dendrite and eutectic growth theories are applied to describe the observed processes.
Xiujun HAN, Wenjing YAO and Bingbo WEDepartment of Applied Physics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
