PART VI - Communications - On Apparent Pore Formation During Cellular Solidification

PORE formation during solidification has recently been studied theoretically by Piwonka and Flemings.1 For the ordinary conditions of cellular solidification, these authors state that there is a difficulty in explaining the formation of pores. The difficulty arises because the conditions necessary for pore formation are not those obtained during cellular growth. Therefore Piwonka and Flemings1 had to examine various unusual possibilities in order to explain the apparent presence of pores in a cellular substructure of aluminum, taken from Doherty.2 For aluminum, Doherty and Davis3 have developed a pitting technique to reveal substructure, which depends upon the condensation of vacancies from supersaturated solution after quenching. This technique as further developed4 was used to study solidification substructures. In the case of striations, delineation of the substructure is produced by the absence of surface pitting after quenching: in the vicinity of the striations the dislocations which constitute this substructure are sinks for vacancies. In the case of the cellular substructure the experimentally observed effect is the same. However, in this latter case Doherty and Davis4 suggested that micropores associated with the cellular substructure were the agent responsible for providing sinks for vacancies. This interpretation seemed necessary for the cellular substructure because no misorientation arising from a dislocation array could be observed. It is noted especially that Fig. 1 presented by Piwonka and Flemings1 and Fig. 5 by Doherty and Davis,4 as