Scroll compressors are popularly applied in air-conditioning systems. The conventional fabrication process causes gas and shrinkage porosity in the scroll. In this paper, the electromagnetic stirring (EMS)-based semisolid multicavity squeeze casting (SMSC) process is proposed for effectively manufacturing wrought aluminum alloy scrolls. Insulation temperature, squeeze pressure, and the treatment of the micromorphology and mechanical properties of the scroll were investigated experimentally. It was found that reducing the insulation temperature can decrease the grain size, increase the shape factor, and improve mechanical properties. The minimum grain size was found as 111 ± 3 μm at the insulation temperature of 595 °C. The maximum tensile strength, yield strength, and hardness were observed as 386 ± 8 MPa, 228 ± 5 MPa, and 117 ± 5 HV, respectively, at the squeeze pressure of 100 MPa. The tensile strength and hardness of the scroll could be improved, and the elongation was reduced by the T6 heat treatment. The optimal process parameters are recommended at an insulation temperature in the range of 595-600 °C and a squeeze pressure of 100 MPa. Under the optimal process parameters, scroll casting was completely filled, and there was no obvious shrinkage defect observed inside. Its microstructure is composed of fine and spherical grains.

Electromagnetic stirring (EMS) has become one of the most important branches of the electromagnetic processing of materials. However, a deep understanding of the influence of the EMS on the thermo-fluid flow of the aluminium alloy melt, and consequently the refinement of the microstructure is still not available. This paper investigated the influence of the operating parameters of EMS on the magnetohydrodynamics, temperature field, flow field, and the vortex-shaped structure of the melt as well as the microstructure of the aluminium alloy 2A50 billet by numerical simulation and experiments. The operating parameters were categorised into three groups representing high, medium, and low levels of Lorentz forces generated by EMS. The numerical simulation matched well with the experimental result. It was found that a high level of EMS can improve the uniformity of the temperature and flow fields. The maximum speed was observed at the radius of around 25 mm under all EMS levels. Both the depth and diameter of the vortex-shaped structure generated increased with the enhancement in the EMS level. The average grain size of the edge sample of the billet was reduced by 48.3% while the average shape factor was increased by 51.0% under the medium-level EMS.

Al-Mg-Si based alloys are popular alloys used in the automotive industry. However, limited studies have been performed to investigate the microstructure, deformation characteristics, and deformation mechanism for the semi-solid 6063 alloys. In this study, the cold radial forging method and semi-solid isothermal treatment (SSIT) are proposed in the semi-solid isothermal compression (SSIC) process to fabricate high-quality semi-solid 6063 billets. The effects of deformation temperature, strain rate, and strain on the microstructure, deformation characteristics, and deformation mechanism of the SSIC of cold radial forged 6063 alloys were investigated experimentally. Constitutive equations were established based on the measured data in experiments to predict the flow stress. Results show that an average grain size in the range from 59.22 to 73.02 μm and an average shape factor in the range from 071 to 078 can be obtained in the microstructure after the cold radial forged 6063 alloys were treated with SSIT process. Four stages (i.e., sharp increase, decrease, steady state, and slow increase) were observed in the true stress- true strain curve. The correlation coefficient of the constitutive equation was obtained as 0.9796 while the average relative error was 5.01%. The deformation mechanism for SSIC of cold radial forged aluminum alloy 6063 mainly included four modes: The liquid phase flow, grain slide or grain rotation along with the liquid film, slide among solid grains, and the plastic deformation of solid grains.