Abstract
The current study investigates the influences of the fluidized bed heat treatment on the quality indices and microstructural characterization of A356.2 and B319.2 castings. Traditional heat treatment technology, employing circulating air convection furnaces (CF), was used to establish a relevant comparison with fluidized sand bed (FB) for the heat treatment of the alloys investigated, employing T6 continuous aging cycles or multi-temperature aging cycles. The results of alloys subjected to multi-temperature aging cycles reveal that the strength results obtained after the T6 continuous aging treatment of A356 alloys are not improved by means of multi-temperature aging cycles, indicating therefore that the optimum properties are obtained using a T6 aging treatment. The optimum strength properties of B319.2 alloys, however, is obtained by applying multi-temperature aging cycles such as, for example, 230 °C/2 h followed by 180 °C/8 h, rather than T6 aging treatment. In the case of multi-temperature aging cycles, the modification factor has the most significant role in improving the quality index values of 356 and 319 alloys. The FB heattreated alloys have the highest strength values for all heat treatment cycles compared to CF heat-treated alloys; however, the FB has no significant effect on the quality values of 319 alloys compared to the CF.