Abstract
The Horizontal Single Belt Casting (HSBC) process has proven to be a viable alternative to cast a wide range of metallic alloys, e.g., commercial aluminum alloys, Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS), Copper alloys, as well as some Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMG). Among the many HSBC process advantages, (including reduced operational costs, reduced energy needs, and much reduced pollution output) vs conventional strip casting using the DC (Direct Chill) casting approach, its uniformly higher cooling rates also makes the HSBC process a potential candidate for casting BMG products. In the current study, we used three potentially vitrifiable calcium alloys (60Ca-20Mg-20Al, 60Ca-15Mg-10Al-15Zn, 55Ca-15Mg-10Al-15Zn-5Cu), which were cast into thin amorphous strips. The purpose of the present work is to explore the optimal casting parameters such as maximum thickness of bulk amorphous strips that could be cast via the HSBC, based on information regarding an alloy’s glass forming temperature, its critical cooling rate, and other relevant properties. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS-Fluent version 19.0 was used to study the effect of the metal feeding system type, surface roughness and belt speed on the cooling rate, searching for the optimal combination of parameters to obtain a completely amorphous matrix using the HSBC, during the selection of the various BMG alloys.