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APPLICATIONS OF THERMO-CALC

Quality Control

Thermo-Calc can be used to design more reproducible processing routes by predicting the sensitivity of thermophysical properties of an alloy to variations in composition and thermal history.

Applications to Quality Control

Maintaining quality control through all stages of the processing chain is critical to obtain superior products and to reduce rework. Thermo-Calc provides the ability to understand the sensitivity of the material at different stages of processing to chemistry and temperature variations. By pre-determining process parameters for allowable chemistry ranges, operational windows can be established in advance. If chemistries or process parameters deviate from specification, Thermo-Calc can provide flexibility in day-to-day operations through informed decision making.

Predict the following as a function of material chemistry and process variation:

  • Thermophysical properties, such as:
    • Specific heat, enthalpy, latent heat, viscosity, density as a function of temperature, coefficient of thermal expansion, and more
    • How chemistry variations within a material specification impact phase transformation temperatures
    • Long tail effects of allowable composition ranges on processing windows
    • Minimize the need to rework or scrap of material or parts

Application Examples

Thermo-Calc has many applications to quality control. Below is one such example.

Predicting Influence of Chemistry on Process Windows

Alloys typically have a nominal or target chemistry and an allowable tolerance range for each element. When developing process windows, determining tail effects due to variation within chemistry can require many hundreds of experiments. With Thermo-Calc, determining the sensitivity of a particular property, such as the solvus temperature of a given phase, can be done for all combinations of chemistry within the allowed range, thus establishing a range for that given property rather than a single value based on nominal chemistry or a handbook value. 

This figure shows the calculated variation in the beta transus temperature for 1000 chemistries within the Ti-6Al-4V alloy specification. To avoid part rework, it is usually critical to avoid exceeding this temperature during processing.

A histogram showing variation in the beta transus temperature for 1000 chemistries within the Ti-6Al-4V alloy specification.

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