Authors: S Nourouzi H Baseri A Kolahdooz S M Ghavamodini
Publish Date: 2013/12/28
Volume: 27, Issue: 12, Pages: 3869-3874
Abstract
Semisolid metal SSM processing has been recognized as an advanced process to produce highquality and lowcost engineering components The cooling slope method is a simple route that can develop nondendritic slurry for various purposes with reduced equipment and processing costs In this study the cooling slope method was employed to produce the A356 feedstock in SSM processing The dendritic primary phase in the conventionally cast A356 alloy has transformed into a nondendritic one through the use of ingots cast over a cooling plate with a different pouring temperature After pouring the melt that becomes semisolid at the end of the plate is consequently poured into cylindrical steel molds with different mold temperatures Also the process has been conducted in different cooling slopes and different cooling lengths Then a backpropagation neural network has been designed to correlate the process parameters to grain size Finally genetic algorithm GA has been used to optimize the process parameters Results indicate that the pouring temperature mold temperature cooling slope and cooling length have significant effects on size and morphology of αAl phase The GA can optimize the process as well
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