Development and application of a new freckle criterion for technical remelting processes

In technical solidification processes like Electro Slag (ESR) or Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR), freckles present a serious type of defects which limit the maximum ingot size for many grades of steels and superalloys. Therefore, modelling of freckle formation is an important task for optimizing industrial remelting processes. Practically all present freckle models are based on a critical Rayleigh number. They are inspired by the “classical” assumption that freckles are caused by an inversion of the liquid density in the semisolid region. Plumes of the lighter segregated liquid evolve through perturbation of the metastable layering of the melt in the mushy zone, a mechanism which motivates its description via Rayleigh criteria. But these models are not suitable for materials like Alloy 718 which do not show a liquid density inversion, but nevertheless are prone to freckle formation in technical remelting processes. In this paper, a criterion is developed which – instead of using a Rayleigh number – is based on the evaluation of the non-isothermal component of an instantaneous down-hill flow of heavy segregated melt in a melt pool with axial symmetry. With knowledge of the exact pool geometry and the shape and properties of the mushy zone, the occurrence of freckles can be predicted. The model is applied to a technical ESR casting for which temperature fields and microstructural parameters have been obtained using CFD and 3D phase-field modelling, respectively. Furthermore, the implications are discussed which the new model offers for the understanding of freckles in technical remelting processes.