Side branch morphology and coarsening in directionally solidified Pb-8.4 at. pct Au

The scaling relationships among the morphological features associated with the formation of perturbations (side branches) in the intercellular regions of a directionally solidified Pg-8.4 at. pct Au alloy were investigated. It is shown that the ratio between the initial side-branch spacing near dendrite tips, lambda-2, and the dendrite-tip radius, r(t), equals 2 to 2.5. The ratio between the distance from the dendrite tip to the location of the first side branch formation, lambda(p), and the t(r) equals 8 to 10. It was found that the model proposed by Kirkwood (1985) for the secondary dendrite arm coarsening shows a very good quantitative fit to the experimentally observed secondary arm coarsening kinetics during directional solidification.