A Modified Method of Latent Heat Release during Al–Si Alloy Solidification

The treatment of latent heat plays a significant role in the solidification simulation process. Many methods have been developed to make the simulation results much closer to reality. In this study, in order to process the latent heat release of Al–Si alloy, the apparent heat capacity method and the heat integration method are applied to deal with the latent heat release of the primary phase and the eutectic phase, respectively. The latent heat of each phase of Al–Si alloy is acquired according to Differential Scanning Calorimetry experiment. The solidification simulation software named TMCast based on Finite Difference Method employs this modified latent heat treatment method. Applying the DSC results, the temperature field is calculated for a step casting. The casting experiment is carried out to validate the method by comparing the actual cooling curves with the simulated ones. It indicates that the computed cooling curves are close to the actual ones at the phase transformation stage so that the solidification simulation will be improved by using the modified latent heat method.