Comparison of different analytical methods for the calculation of latent heat of solidification of 3XX aluminum alloys

The number of available software packages for the calculation of solidification and thermo physical properties of as cast products are a good indication of the interest that still exists in the casting industry on this subject. In this paper, the accuracy of three applied analytical methods for the calculation of the latent heat of solidification in the 3XX series of aluminum alloys has been estimated in comparison with the values of the latent heat measured by the differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) apparatus. The results of these calculations were found to be very accurate. It was noted that there is still the possibility for some improvement in the accuracy in all the analytical methods considered here.