Title: Simulation study on rapid solidification of eutectic Al-Cu alloy: a molecular dynamics approach

Authors: Seshadev Sahoo

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technical Education and Research, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan University, Odisha, Bhubaneswar-751030, India

Abstract: It has been found out that the metals and alloys produced by rapid cooling techniques have better structural and mechanical properties. The cooling rate is a critical factor affecting the resulting structure of a liquid-solid transition. The solidification of Al-33 wt% Cu is studied with the constant-volume and constant-temperature molecular dynamics technique to obtain an atomic description of structural transformation. The system is modelled by using embedded atom method (EAM) including many body interactions. Molecular dynamics simulation study based on the EAM potential is carried out to study the unidirectional solidification behaviour of Al-33 wt% Cu alloy. The radial distribution function during cooling and heating processes provides a good picture of the structural transformation, i.e., solid to liquid and again solid which has crystalline in nature. From the simulation result, it was found that the solid/liquid interface moves smoothly unidirectionally with an interface velocity of 9 m/s. This simulation study gives a clear picture of the rapid solidification of Al-Cu alloy at atomic level.

Keywords: solidification; simulation; molecular dynamics; LAMMPS; eutectic alloy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2017.088722

International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, 2017 Vol.7 No.1, pp.18 - 25

Received: 08 Jun 2016
Accepted: 08 Jun 2017
Published online: 15 Dec 2017 *

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