Numerical study of convection-induced peritectic macro-segregation effect at the directional counter-gravity solidification of Ti–46Al–8Nb alloy

Unidirectional counter-gravity (upward) melt solidification of Ti–46Al–8Nb (at%) intermetallic alloy was performed in the three-zone resistive tube electro-furnace with power-down thermal profile operation. The laboratory refinement of cylindrical ingots growth technique was developed in course of terrestrial preparation experiments in the facility specially designed for a sounding rocket flight. Despite Ti–46Al–8Nb is nominally slightly pro-peritectic composition, an axial elongated channel-like area with peritectically-transformed microstructure was observed in solidified ingots, where Al content locally exceeds 47 at%. For revealing the reasons of this microstructural inhomogeneity formation, the numerical modeling was applied. The real-time-scale 2D temperature field mapping, macro-scale study of melt hydrodynamics, heat–mass transfer, segregation effects, mushy zone evolution and solidification dynamics of TiAl–Nb melt/solid system have been performed accordingly. It was found that appearance of peritectic axial “spindle” in the solid is induced by the joint action of two factors in the melt: (i) rejection of Al solute ahead of the concave growth interface (dendrite tips front); (ii) development of weak laminar thermo-gravitational convective flow that picks-up, pulls upward and stratifies an Al-enriched stream along the axis of melt column. The driving force of convection is a radial thermal gradient that depends on the furnace operational thermal conditions. To prevent the segregation, it was shown numerically that single regular convective cell could be broken into several cells by the appropriate variation of power-down cooling rate. The resulting uniform as-solidified microstructure of alloy obtained confirms the modeling findings.