Progress of solidification principles and the applications

The theories to describe the liquid to solid transformation behaviors are defined to be solidification principles. The materials processing technologies based on controlled liquid to solid transformation processing are solidification technologies. This review paper summarized the applications, including shape casting, ingot casting and crystal growth. The progress of solidification researches of both principles and technologies were then analyzed. The solidification conditions corresponding to different applications were summarized. It was pointed out that the variant solidification technologies can be defined according to the difference of temperature gradient and cooling rates. Furthermore, from the point view of practical applications, the research frontiers were discussed, which should be the solidification principles of multi-component alloys, near rapid solidification principles and technologies, and description of the solidification process in different scales and the correlation among different scales. Finally, the solidification problems related to the shape casting, ingot casting, and melt growth of single crystals, were discussed.