The main purpose of this paper is to investigate both the columnar to equiaxed transition and primary dendritic arm spacings of Al-3wt.%Si alloy during the horizontal directional solidification. The transient heat transfer coefficient at the metal-mold interface is calculated based on comparisons between the experimental thermal profiles in castings and the simulations provided by a finite difference heat flow program. Simulated curve of the interfacial heat transfer coefficient was used in another numerical solidification model to determine theoretical values of tip growth rates, cooling rates and thermal gradients that are associated with both columnar to equiaxed transition and primary dendritic arm spacings. A good agreement was observed between the experimental values of these thermal variables and those numerically simulated for the alloy examined. A comparative analysis is carried out between the experimental data of this work and theoretical models from the literature that have been proposed to predict the primary dendritic spacings. In this context, this study may contribute to the understanding of how to manage solidification operational parameters aiming at designing the microstructure of Al-Si alloys.

Experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of thermal parameters on the columnar to equiaxed transition during the horizontal unsteady-state directional solidification of Al-Si alloys. The parameters analyzed include the heat transfer coefficients, growth rates, cooling rates, temperature gradients and composition. A combined theoretical and experimental approach is developed to determine the solidification thermal variables considered. The increasing solute content in Al-Si alloys was not found to affect significantly the experimental position of the CET which occurred for cooling rates in the range between 0.35 and 0.64 K/s for any of three alloy compositions examined. A comparative analysis between the results of this work and those from the literature proposed to analyze the CET during upward vertical solidification of Al-Si alloys is reported and the results have shown that the end of the columnar region during horizontal directional solidification is abbreviated as a result of about six times higher thermal gradient than that verified during upward unidirectional solidification of alloys investigated.

The main purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of thermal parameters such as growth rate (V L) and cooling rate (T R) on the primary dendrite arm spacings (λ1) during the horizontal transient directional solidification of Al-7wt.%Si hypoeutectic alloy. The primary dendrite spacings were measured along the length of the samples and correlated with these thermal parameters. The variation of dendrite spacings is expressed as a power law function of V L and T R given by the formulas λ1 = 55(V L)-1.1 and λ1 = 212 (T R)-0.55, respectively. A comparative study between the results of this work and those from the literature proposed to investigate these dendrite spacings during the upward and downward vertical directional solidification of Al-7wt.%Si alloy is also conducted. Finally, the experimental data are compared with some predictive dendritic models from the literature.