Formation mechanisms and control method for stray grains at melt-back region of Ni-based single crystal seed

An experimental study together with numerical simulation was conducted to investigate the formation mechanisms and control methods for stray grains at melt-back of seed in this paper. The numerical simulation results showed that the convex solid/liquid (S/L) interface changed very slowly into a concave interface during the initial solidification stage and the undercooling was slightly affected by the S/L curvature change. The formation of stray grains below melt-back interface at seed perimeter could be suppressed with the decrease of clearance between the seed and mold. However when the clearance was further decreased to 0, an orientation deviation layer formed originated from the deformation of un-melted seed caused by different expend coefficient between the seed and mold. The nucleation of stray grains above the melt-back interface at the seed perimeter could be suppressed using the mold with small surface roughness. The isolated un-melted dendrite stem at semi-solid mushy of the seed with the large original primary dendrite spacing transfer to complex network structure, suppressing the formation of the stray grains, when the primary dendrite spacing of seed decreased or the seed underwent solution heat treatment. Then, the formation mechanisms of the stray grains at the melt-back region are discussed based on above results, and a method is proposed to suppress the formation of the stray grains for preparing single crystal components by re-used seed.