Modeling of a transition to diffusionless dendritic growth in rapid solidification of a binary alloy

Diffusionless growth of dendritic crystals results in microsegregation-free microstructures with an initial (nominal) chemical composition of solidifying systems. Normally, a transition from chemically partitioned growth to diffusionless solidification is accompanied by the morphological transition in crystal shape with the appearance of nonlinearity in the kinetic behavior of growing crystals. This phenomenon is discussed using a model of local non-equilibrium rapid solidification. Considering the transition from the solute diffusion-limited growth to purely thermally controlled growth of dendritic crystals, the model predicts the abrupt change of growth kinetics with the break points in the “dendrite tip velocity-undercooling” and “dendrite tip radius-undercooling” relationships. It is shown that the abrupt change of growth kinetics occurs with the ending of the transition to purely thermally controlled growth and the onset of diffusionless solidification. To predict the dendrite growth kinetics in a whole region of undercooling, numeric analysis shows that the model has to take into account both anisotropies of solid–liquid interfacial properties. These are anisotropy of surface energy and anisotropy of atomic kinetics of solidification.