With low density, high ductility, good corrosion resistance, high thermal and electrical conductivity, aluminium has become one of the most frequently used metal in the last century. When the industrial process for the electrolysis reduction of aluminium oxide in pure aluminium was discovered, the use of aluminium increased significantly. Since then, aluminium has been following us in everyday life and sometimes we are not even aware of its presence. Electrolysis aluminium of 99.7 wt. % purity belongs to the group of aluminium alloys 1XXX and it has good corrosion resistance. Aluminium alloy AA6082, which belongs to the group 6XXX, is a medium hard alloy, has excellent corrosion resistance and is used in various applications.
The purpose of the diploma work was to determine the influence of melting in vacuum on the course of solidification of electrolysis aluminium and alloy AA6082 compared to the results of melting and casting in the air. We used vacuum induction furnace for melting and X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), simple thermal analysis (ETA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for the investigations.
After analyses we compared the cooling curves of individual alloys and the heating and cooling DSC curves. We found that the samples, cast in vacuum, needed almost twice as much time for solidification and that the cooling rate was lower than in the samples we poured in the air. It is also observed that the liquidus and solidus temperature is higher at the samples cast in vacuum than in samples cast in air. By DSC analysis of the AA1070 alloy we detected the transformation temperatures of the phases Al13Fe4 and the primary crystals of αAl. At alloy AA6082 we detected the transformation temperatures of the phases Al18Fe2Mg7Si10, Mg2Si, Al15Si2Mn4 and primary crystals of αAl. We have found that more enthalpy is consumed and released at two alloys that were cast and solidified in vacuum.
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