Cooling curve analysis in binary Al-Cu alloys: Part I- Effect of cooling rate and copper content on the eutectic formation

There are many techniques available for investigating the solidification of metals and alloys. In recent years computer-aided cooling curve analysis (CA-CCA) has been used to determine thermo-physical properties of alloys, latent heat and solid fraction. In this study, the effect of cooling rate and copper addition was taken into consideration in non- equilibrium eutectic transformation of binary Al- Cu melt via cooling curve analysis. For this purpose, melts with different copper weight percent of 2.2, 3.7 and 4.8 were prepared and cooled in controlled rates of 0.04 and 0.42 °C/s. Results show that, latent heat of alloy highly depends upon the post- solidification cooling rate and composition. As copper content of alloy and cooling rate increase, achieved nonequilibrium eutectic phase increases that leads to release of high amount of latent heat and appearing of second deviation in cooling curve. This deviation can be seen in first time derivative curve in the form of a definite peak.