Modeling of precipitate-free zone formed upon homogenization in a multi-component alloy

A comprehensive model is presented for the simulation of microstructure evolution during industrial solidification and homogenization processing of aluminum alloys. The model combines on the one hand microsegregation due to long-range diffusion during solidification and subsequent heat treatment with, on the other hand, precipitation in the primary Al phase. The thermodynamic data are directly obtained from a CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) approach to thermodynamic equilibrium in multicomponent systems. The model is applied to the prediction of structure and segregation evolutions in a 3003 aluminum alloy for typical industrial solidification and homogenization sequences. It is shown that: (i) accounting for the nucleation undercooling of the eutectic/peritectic structures solidifying from the melt is essential to retrieval of the measured volume fractions of intergranular precipitates; (ii) calculations of intragranular precipitation are generally not applicable if long-range diffusion is neglected; (iii) the precipitate-free zone can be quantitatively predicted only based on the coupling between intergranular and intragranular precipitation calculations.