Research on Microstructure and Refining Performance of Al-Ti-C Grain Refiner Prepared by Ultrasonic Coupling

Abstract

The application of ultrasonic field in the preparation of Al-Ti-C refiners can lead to the the homogenous distribution of the second phase TiAl3 and the particle phase TiC in the matrix, thus enhancing the refinement effect. In this paper, the Al-Ti-C grain refiner was successfully prepared by the ultrasonic coupling method, and its microstructure was observed. The prepared refiner was added to pure Al to verify the refining performance, and the refining mechanism was analyzed. The results indicate that the Al-Ti-C grain refiner prepared by ultrasonic field has excellent refining performance, which reduces the grain size of Al to 100 μm, and the optimum activation refining time is 3 min. The reason is that the morphology and size of the second phase TiAl3 and TiC in Al-Ti-C are changed by cavitation effect, acoustic streaming effect and thermal effect caused by high intensity ultrasonic, and the α-Al nucleates effectively under the synergistic of TiC and TiAl3 particles.