Effects of Continuous and Pulsed Ultrasonic Treatment on Microstructure and Microhardness in Different Vertical Depth of ZL205A Castings

In this paper, in order to improve the performance of the ZL205A castings, continuous ultrasonic and pulsed ultrasonic treatments were applied to the melted alloy to study the effect of ultrasound propagation distance on microstructure and microhardness. The results indicated that ZL205A grains were significantly refined by ultrasonic vibration, but the refinement effect became weak gradually with the increase of sampling depth. The minimum grain sizes were 103.2 μm and 122.5 μm respectively in continuous and pulsed ultrasonic treatment. Grain boundary segregation also became more serious and coarser with the increase of vertical depth. In addition, microhardness and vertical depth are not positively correlated linearly. As the vertical depth increased, microhardness first decreased and then increased, the maximum hardnesses were 73.9 HV and 72.84 HV, respectively, in the two process modes. According to the experiment results and available studies, the mechanism of ultrasonic treatment maybe that: the cooling rate of solidification interface front increased by cavitation and streaming, thus changing the solute redistribution behavior of the ZL205A melt.