Magnetic and Mechanical Properties of Directionally Solidified Fe-6.5wt.%Si Alloy

Directional solidification technique was employed to produce Fe-6.5wt.%Si alloy with coarse columnar-grain structure, which was almost single crystal. The sectional diameters of columnar grains range from 2.2 to 6.8 mm. The saturation magnetic induction was 2.39 T. In this work, grain growth started from either a Fe-6.5wt.%Si crystal which was not melted at bottom of the specimen or a freely nucleated Fe-6.5wt.%Si crystal as the specimen was completely melted. It was found that the starting situation of the directional solidification plays an important role in the crystal orientation, and hence in properties.