Cooling Curve Analysis to Determine Phase Fractions in Solid-State Precipitation Reactions

This work presents a new method of cooling curve analysis to make in situ measurements of the amount of precipitate formed in solid-state phase transformations. The presented technique is based on a first-principles analysis of thermodynamics and heat flow to develop equations that relate cooling curve data to the amount transformed. The precipitation of Ag2Al in a binary Al-Ag alloy was examined both as a practical example of this technique and to obtain metallographic measurements of the amount of precipitation for comparison purposes.