A discontinuous Galerkin model for precipitate nucleation and growth in aluminium alloy quench processes

This paper presents a finite element model for precipitate nucleation and g rowth during the quench phase of aluminium alloy manufacturing processes. A discontinuous Galerkin model for steady advection-diffusion problems predi cts the thermal response in a continuous quench process. The thermal histor y drives a precipitate evolution model, based on a discrete representation, of the particle size distribution in each local material neighborhood. Thi s approach can require as many as 10(5) degrees of freedom per spatial loca tion. A second discontinuous Galerkin finite element procedure is presented to so lve this seemingly massive problem. The new method scales linearly in both the number of elements and in the number of precipitate degrees of freedom per location. Thus, it is feasible to directly embed the discrete precipita te evolution model in a macroscopic process simulation. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the quench model and the feasibility of ob taining materials with graded microstructures through precision control of conventional quench processes. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.