Journal of Applied Materials Engineering

In recent years, the demand for products made of biodegradable or partially biodegradable materials has been increasing. This is mainly due to the ever-increasing amount of waste in landfills, but also to the problem of post-production waste management. This problem also concerns waste from the casting process of sands made on the basis of furfuryl resin, as well as residues from the regeneration process of these sands. The article presents the issues related to the methodology of research on the biodegradation process both in the natural environment and methods conducted in laboratory conditions. The preliminary results of the research on the biodegradation process in the aquatic environment, to which the dusts from mechanical regeneration of moulding sand were subjected, indicate the directions of further research and work in the field of selection of components of moulding sand with biodegradable properties. These tests should be carried out primarily in terms of determining the minimum and maximum amount of the addition of a biodegradable component to the moulding sand. Full article

In this work, results of an investigation of the microstructure evolution in Haynes^® 230^® alloy are presented. The morphological and chemical compositions of the chosen microstructure’s constituents, such as the primary and secondary carbides, were analyzed based on tests in the temperature range 700–800 °C for 1000–3000 h. The prediction of phase evolution within the microstructure was proposed based on the analysis of mutual replacement of carbide-forming elements at the carbide/matrix interface. Based on the results, some complementary markers were considered to describe Haynes^® 230^® microstructure evolution. Qualitative markers, i.e., defined morphological features, were related to the shape and distribution of microstructure constituents. The study also used quantitative markers related to the local chemical compositions of carbide particles, determined as the ratio of the concentrations of carbide-forming elements Crc/Wc, Crc/Cr_M and Wc/W_M. Microstructure maps created on the basis of these complementary markers for the successive annealing stages reflected the course of its morphological evolution. Full article

The aim of the present work is to compare the properties of self-hardening moulding sands based on inorganic binders based on sodium silicate of different modules, geopolymer binders and phosphate binders and to prove they can be used in the ablation casting process. Ablation casting is a process in which, directly after pouring the liquid alloy, the mould is sprayed with water until it is completely eroded and a finished, cooled casting is obtained. The use of proecological water-dilutable binder makes it possible to recover the sand matrix after drying the suspension that remains after the process. Moulding sands were prepared on the basis of four inorganic binders available on the market. For each of the moulding sands the bending strength was tested after 1, 2, 4 and 24 h of hardening. Then, the masses with optimum bending strength were selected and subjected to gas emissivity tests. A thermal analysis of moulding sands selected for testing was also carried out in order to determine the loss of mass during annealing. The susceptibility of moulds to erosion under the influence of ablative medium was also assessed by measuring the time of mould erosion. Tests showed the possibility of using self-hardening moulding sands based on inorganic binders for the ablation casting process of aluminium-silicon alloys. Full article