Formation of the Microstructure in a Rapid Directionally Solidified Immiscible Alloy

A model has been developed by taking into account the common action of the nucleation, the diffusional growth, the collisions and coagulations of the minority phase droplets and the spatial phase segregation to describe the microstructure evolution in an immiscible alloy solidified rapidly under the vertical directional solidification conditions. The model is satisfactorily verified by comparison with an analytically solvable case first, and then applied to predict the microstructure evolution in a directionally solidified Al-Pb alloy. The numerical results show that at a high solidification velocity a constitutional supercooling region appears in front of the solid/liquid interface and the liquid-liquid decomposition takes place there. A higher solidification velocity leads to a higher nucleation rate for a given temperature gradient and, therefore, a higher number density of the minority phase droplets. As a result, the average radius of droplets in the melt at the solid/liquid interface decreases with the solidification velocity.