LAUSR

Abstract The casting of liquid melt on a preheated substrate layer to produce a metallurgical compound represents a direct approach towards clad aluminum strips. To investigate this direct process route and the formation of a metallurgical bond at the interface, a small-scale pilot plant to cast pure aluminum on strips of aluminum alloy 7075 under controlled conditions was developed. Composite casting plates were produced at varying casting parameters (preheating temperature of the substrate, clad layer thickness, casting speed, melt temperature) and subsequently analyzed by metallographic means to classify the bond quality. Suitable thermal conditions for the melt flow in the casting device were found by numerical simulation using a commercial fluid flow and solidification software package. Additional meso- and micro-modeling of the casting and the bonding zone supported the understanding of the bonding mechanism. The heat transfer in the macro-model of the casting device was calibrated using measured temperatures obtained during compound casting experiments. A finer meshed two-dimensional meso-model of the casting device was derived from the macro-model to gain more accurate information about the temperature distribution in the vicinity of the bonding zone. This interface between the pure aluminum and the aluminum alloy was modeled in extremely high temporal and spatial resolution (micro-model) as temperatures are not accessible there by direct measurements. These simulation results show the time-resolved re-melting and re-solidification of the aluminum alloy during compound formation. The obtained simulation results correlate very well with electrochemically etched cross sections of cast bilayer aluminum strips. The experiments show that the oxide layer at the interface has to be removed completely during the casting process to obtain high quality compounds. The assumed mechanism of detachment and transport of the fractured oxide is shown schematically and necessary thermo-mechanical conditions for the removal of the oxide skin are discussed.