Effect of Different Mold Materials on the Microstructure, Thermomechanical Processing Behaviour, and Corrosion Response in Pure Aluminium

Grain size reduction of materials is one of the methods to influence many properties such as strength, hardness, ductility, wear resistance, and it’s the only way to improve the strength of material without affecting the ductility. Similarly, corrosion resistance also exhibits the variation with grain size of the materials as shown by some studies. In present study, Pure Aluminium (Al) has been cast in sand, graphite, and metallic molds. All cast samples of Al in various molds are employed with thermo-mechanical processing (TMP). Microstructure and grain size measurements are obtained before and after TMP. Grain size and corrosion rate result suggests that there is no clear relationship between corrosion rate and grain size for all three mold (sand, graphite, metallic) casting. Corrosion rate increases with grain size for metallic mold. However, reverse behavior has been obtained for graphite and sand molds.