MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF MELTING, SOLIDIFICATION AND REMELTING PROCESSES OF ALUMINUM

A molecular dynamics simulation study has been performed to investigate thesolidification and remelting of aluminum using Sutton-Chen many body potential. Differentnumbers of atoms from 108 to 2048 atoms were considered to find an adequate size for the system.Three different cooling and heating rates, i.e. 10^12 K/s, 10^13 K/s and 10^14 K/s, were used. Thestructure of the system was examined using radial distribution function. The melting andcrystallization temperatures of aluminum were evaluated by calculating the variation of heatcapacity during the phase transformation. Additionally, Wendt–Abraham parameters werecalculated to determine the glass transition temperature. It is shown that the melting temperature ofaluminum increases as the heating rate increases. During solidification, a crystalline oramorphous-like structure is formed depending on the cooling rate. Remelting of the amorphoussolidified material is accompanied by crystallization before melting at heating rates 10^14 K/s. Themelting temperature also depends on the degree of structural crystallinity before remelting.