The thermal conductivity of alloys is gradually becoming appreciated. It is often assumed that heat treatment can improve the thermal conductivity of Al-Si-Mg-Cu alloys, but there has been little relevant research. This paper studies the effects of different casting processes and short T6 heat treatment (ST6) on the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of Al-Si-Mg-Cu alloys. The results show that a microstructure with fine α-Al crystal grains can be obtained by semi-solid die casting (SSDC), improving the mechanical properties of the Al-Si-Mg-Cu alloy in the as-cast state. After SSDC, the size and aspect ratio of eutectic silicon can be reduced by ST6 treatment, effectively improving the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of the alloy. Finally, the influence of eutectic silicon on electron transport is analyzed in detail. With the SSDC + ST6 processing technology, Al-Si-Mg-Cu alloys with excellent thermal conductivity and mechanical properties can be obtained.

In this paper, the effects of size, morphology and distribution of eutectic silicon on the thermal conductivity of Al-8Si alloy modified by Sr (0.04, 0.08, 0.12 wt.%) and Sb (0.1, 0.3, 0.5 wt.%) elements with T6 heat treatment were investigated. The results show that the modified fibrous eutectic silicon has a significant capability of improvement of thermal conductivity, while the amount of the modifier has a relatively weak effect on thermal conductivity. After T6 treatment, the fracture or spheroidization of the flake eutectic silicon and the disappearance of clustering phenomenon could raise thermal conductivity, but the coarsening of fibrous eutectic silicon is inconducive to thermal conductivity. Finally, the effect of eutectic silicon on electron transport is analyzed in detail, which could provide a reference for enhancing the thermal (or electrical) conductivity of hypoeutectic Al-Si alloy through effective microstructure control.

Cooling rate plays a critical role in determining the thermal conductivity of Al-Si alloys. Although the effect of morphology and size of Si (changed by heat treatment) on its thermal conductivity has been investigated, the effect of cooling rates on thermal conductivity has not been well studied. In this study, we investigated the microstructure of an Al-8Si (with and without modification by Strontium (Sr)) alloy with cooling rates from 46.2 °C/s to 234 °C/s. It was found that the effect of cooling rate on thermal conductivity of Sr modification and Sr-free samples are opposite from each other. As a result, while the cooling rate increased from 46.2 °C/s to 234 °C/s, the calculated thermal conductivity increased from 145.3 MS/m to 151.5 MS/m for Sr-free Al-8Si alloy, and the calculated thermal conductivity was reduced from 187.5 MS/m to 176.7 MS/m for the Sr-modified Al-8Si alloy. By discussing how thermal conductivity correlates with eutectic silicon morphology and secondary dendrite arm spacing, the relationship between cooling rate and thermal conductivity were explained. This work suggests a new design strategy for improving the thermal conductivity of Al-Si hypoeutectic alloys.

In post-necking tension of cylindrical specimen, the stress corrections based on the current analytical models have relatively significant errors at large strains. In this study, the prediction capability of these models involving Bridgman model, Siebel model and Chen model is evaluated by performing a series of finite element simulations of uniaxial tension of cylindrical specimen with different hardening exponents varied from 0.05 to 0.3. Numerical analysis of stress and strain distributions on the necking cross section indicates that the considerable errors of the corrected stresses corresponding to large strains might be mainly attributed to the assumption of uniform strain distribution on the necking cross section in these analytical models. The modification strategies of these models are presented in order to improve their prediction accuracy of post-necking stresses, taking geometrical configuration of neck and material properties into consideration. Accordingly, the modification formulas are proposed based on simulation results, involving the radius of cross section of neck and the hardening exponent. Finally, these formulas are used to correct the stresses in the post-necking tension of Q345 cylindrical specimen, which are compared with the stresses identified through inverse method. The results indicate that the modified models significantly improve the prediction accuracy of post-necking stresses at large strains.

The hardening curve for cylindrical specimens determined by conventional uniaxial tension tests generally corresponds to a relatively narrow strain range due to the occurrence of necking. To achieve the hardening curve within a large strain range, in this study, the multi-specimen tension tests with pre-torsion are developed through extrapolating the hardening curve from the stress–strain data of cylindrical specimens with various magnitudes of pre-torsion strains. The calculation of pre-strain of twisted specimen needs to be addressed for the multi-specimen tension tests. The three calculation methods on the multi-specimen tension tests are proposed, leading to their individual hardening curves for Q345 specimens. An optimal strategy for the multi-specimen tests with pre-torsion is presented by comparison with the inverse method for a single specimen tension test. The results for Q345 specimen show the strain range (0–0.6) of the hardening curve determined by the multi-specimen tension tests is significantly larger than one (0–0.04) from conventional tension test, with reasonable accuracy. Compared with the current multi-specimen tests with pre-extrusion/drawing, the proposed multi-specimen tests with pre-torsion is possessed of stronger applicability and generality, lower cost, and higher efficiency.

The accurate measurement of flow stress curve to large strains using cylindrical compression specimen is always a great challenge due to the influence of friction. Recently, the present authors designed a hyperbolic shaped compression (HSC) specimen which can yield an average true stress- strain curve independent of friction and proposed a stress correction function for fast estimation of flow stress curve to large strains. The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, to investigate whether the analytical method for stress correction of tensile necking can, or cannot, be extended to HSC specimen for correcting average true stress into flow stress. Secondly, to develop an inverse method based on Kriging surrogate model for identifying the optimal parameters of modified Voce model using HSC specimen. Lastly, the advantages and disadvantages of these three methods were compared and the recommendations for application were also discussed. The results show that the analytical method is more suitable to the stress correction for material with higher n-value but shows worse capability for correcting flow stress related to large strains for material with lower n-value. For Q420 steel, the maximum strain achieved by HSC specimen (0.8) is far higher than that achieved by cylindrical tension specimen (0.55). The analytical method can correct the flow stress in the strain range of 0–0.5 effectively but underestimating the flow stress in the strain range of 0.5–0.8 due to its low n-value. Both inverse method and stress correction function can determine the flow stress in the strain range of 0–0.8 successfully. Thus, for isotropic material with tension–compression yield symmetry, it is recommended to use the HSC specimen instead of conventional tension and compression tests of cylindrical specimens to determine the flow stress curve to large strains.