Formation of novel flower-like silicon phases and evaluation of mechanical properties of hypereutectic melt-spun Al–20Si–5Fe alloys with addition of V

In this work, rapidly solidified hypereutectic Al–20Si–5Fe–XV (X=0, 0.5 and 1) alloys were fabricated by melt spinning under vacuum. Microstructural and spectroscopic analyses were performed using SEM, TEM, TEM-MAPing, TEM-EDS and XRD measurements. Mechanical properties of the alloys were determined using DSI measurements. Experimental results indicated that addition of 0.5 wt% V to melt-spun Al–20Si–5Fe alloys induced formation of a novel flower-like Si phase. And addition of higher amount V (1 wt%), caused formation of refined Si phases and mostly hindered formation of Fe-bearing intermetallics. Observations along with manuscript strongly indicate that V modifies the Si phases by the impurity induced twinning (IIT). Changes in the dynamic microhardness of the samples were mainly determined by the size of Si phases. Addition of vanadium led to quite lower elastic modulus in the vanadium added alloys compared to base alloy.