Quantitative Phase-Field Modeling of Rapid Alloy Solidification

Abstract: We further develop a recently introduced phase-field model of rapid alloy solidification [Ji et al., PRL 2023]. This model utilizes enhanced solute diffusivity within the spatially diffuse interface region to quantitatively capture solute trapping with a larger interface width, thereby making simulations on experimentally relevant length and time scales computationally feasible. The main developments presented here include testing the robustness of different variational formulations, extending the model to concentrated alloys by incorporating solid and liquid free energies from thermodynamic databases, as illustrated for hypoeutectic Al-Ag alloys with CALPHAD, extending convergence tests as a function of interface width to 3D, and carrying out simulations in both 2D and 3D to examine existing theories of microstructure development. Our results indicate that the simplest variational formulation that interpolates the bulk free-energy density between its solid and liquid forms is the most robust. Remarkably, for hypoeutectic Al-Ag alloys, this formulation yields a high-velocity nonequilibrium phase diagram that is independent of interface width, thereby demonstrating that the framework of enhanced solute diffusivity framework can be non-trivially extended to concentrated alloys. Other variational formulations have restricted ranges of materials or processing parameters that can be reliably modeled. We use 2D simulations to construct high-velocity microstructure selection maps for dilute Al-Cu alloys. Furthermore, 3D simulations demonstrate a good convergence similar to that observed in 2D as a function of interface width. Full 3D simulations reveal that the standard theory of absolute stability is a good predictor of the upper critical velocity beyond which steady-state growth becomes unstable, despite the different morphological manifestations of this instability in 2D and 3D.