Effects of Al-TiO2-C Refiners Prepared by Different Compacting Pressures on Refinement Performance of ZL101 Alloy

The Al-TiO2-C grain refiners with the mass fraction of 0.3% La2O3 were synthesized by the exothermic dispersion method using Al, TiO2, C, and La2O3 powders as raw materials, The refiners were fabricated by different compacting pressures, including 80, 85, 88, 90kN and 92kN respectively. Effect of Al-TiO2-C refiners prepared by different compacting pressures on refinement performance of ZL101 alloy was studied. The effects of compacting pressures on the phase morphology and microstructure of Al-TiO2-C refiners were investigated by using XRD, SEM and EDS analysis. The refinement capability of Al-TiO2-C refiners on ZL101 alloy was evaluated by using extracting characteristic values from thermal analysis cooling curves of ZL101 alloy, which comes from MATLAB software. The results show that the optimal compacting pressure is 90kN, Al-3 Ti exhibiting round block obviously increases and the size is uniformly distributed in the microstructure of refiners; moreover, the number of nucleation particles TiC as well as Al2O3 is increased. Al-TiO2-C has the best refinement performance on ZL101 alloy.