Melt conditioned direct chill casting (MC-DC) of wrought Al-alloys

Abstract

Melt Conditioned Direct Chill (MC-DC) casting is a new development for producing high-quality billets and slabs. In the MC-DC process, liquid metal is continuously fed into a MCAST (melt conditioning by advanced shear technology) machine, where the liquid metal is subjected to high shear rate and high degree of turbulence provided by a twin screw mechanism at temperatures either above or below the alloy liquidus, and the conditioned liquid metal is then fed continuously into a Direct Chill (DC) caster to produce billets or slabs. The MC-DC process is applicable to both Aland Mg-alloys. In this paper we present our experimental investigations of the effects of processing parameters on the microstructural and compositional uniformity of 5xxx and 7xxx series Al-alloys. It has been confirmed by our experiments that the MC-DC process can produce billets and slabs with fine and uniform microstructure, uniform chemical compositions and much reduced cast defects, such as porosity and cracks.