Low Cost and Energy Efficient Methods for the Manufacture of Semi-Solid (SSM) Feedstock

Apelian, Diran ; Pan, Qingyue ; Makhlouf, Makhlouf

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

关键词: Energy Consumption;    Alloys;    ";    Feedstock";   

DOI  :  10.2172/859300
RP-ID  :  DOE/ID/14232
RP-ID  :  FC36-02ID14232
RP-ID  :  859300

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The SSM Consortium (now ACRC) at WPI has been carrying out fundamental, pre-competitive research in SSM for several years. Current and past research (at WPI) has generated many results of fundamental and applied nature, which are available to the SSM community. These include materials characterization, yield stress effects, alloy development, rheological properties, process modeling/simulation, semi-solid slurry formation, etc. Alternative method to produce SSM slurries at lower processing costs and with reduced energy consumption is a critical need. The production of low cost SSM feedstock will certainly lead to a dramatic increase in the tonnage of castings produced by SSM, and will provide end users such as the transportation industry, with lighter, cheaper and high performance materials. In this program, the research team has addressed three critical issues in semi-solid processing. They are: (1) Development of low cost, reliable slurry-on-demand approaches for semi-solid processing; (2) Application of the novel permanent grain refining technology-SiBloy for the manufacture of high-quality SSM feedstock, and (3) Development of computational and modeling tools for semi-solid processing to enhance SSM process control. Salient results from these studies are summarized and detailed in our final technical report.