Motion of equiaxed grains during directional solidification under static magnetic field

The in situ and real time observations of the equiaxed grain motion during directional solidification of Al-10 wt% Cu under static magnetic field has been carried out by means of synchrotron X-ray radiography. It was observed that equiaxed grains moved approximately along the direction perpendicular to both the imposed magnetic field and the temperature gradient. Based on the radiographs, the motion of the solid grains was analyzed for various temperature gradients, and it was shown that the trajectories were imposed by the combination of the Thermo-Electric Magnetic forces, induced by the coupling of thermo-electric currents with the permanent magnetic field and the gravity force. The variations of the velocities and sizes of grains during the equiaxed growth under static magnetic field were measured and compared to a simple analytical model for the Thermo-Electric Magnetic forces and the Stokes law. A good agreement was achieved for the deviation angle as a function of the grain diameter, while a large discrepancy was observed for the velocity intensity when the dimensions of the equiaxed grains increased. In the latter case, it was shown that the corrections for both sample confinement and grain morphology were mandatory to explain the very low values of grain velocities.