Commercially supplied inoculation wires have a guaranteed chemical composition but not the size and distribution of individual phases, which are very important for nucleation. Therefore, two commercial alloys used for the inoculation of Al-Si alloys (AlTi3B1 and AlTi5B1) are investigated in this paper. The emphasis is placed on their structural analysis and the size and distribution of individual intermetallic phases. Furthermore, the grain refinement effect will be tested by adding these alloys to the AlSi7Mg0.3 alloy and testing the optimal amount of added inoculation wires. The results showed that the size and distribution of the individual phases in AlTi3B1 and AlTi5B1 meet the requirements for the successful inoculation of aluminum alloys, the intermetallic phases based on the TiAl3 phase are fine enough, and there is no agglomeration that would reduce the number of nuclei. This assumption was confirmed by adding these inoculants to the AlSi7Mg0.3 alloy, and it was found that the most ideal amount of inoculants added is 0.01 wt % when the structure was refined by approximately 32%.
This article deals with the issue of silumin inoculation. Two alloys, AlSi7Mg0.3 and AlSi10.5Cu1.2Mn0.8Ni1.2, were selected. 4 pieces of castings were cast from each alloy. One casting was not inoculated and 3 castings were inoculated using AlTi5B1 prealloy in concentrations of 0.05 wt. %, 0.1 wt % and 0.2 wt. % Ti. The castings were cast into metal molds preheated to a temperature of 200°C ± 5°C. In total, 8 pieces of metallographic cuttings were prepared for each alloy. Four samples were taken from the bottom part of the casting and four samples from the middle part of the casting. Secondary axes of DAS dendrites were measured using a microscope. Subsequently, the microhardness of the solid solution α was measured according to Vickers.
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