Preparation of bulk Zr55Al10Ni5Cu30 metallic glass ring by centrifugal casting method

In this work, a conventional centrifugal casting method was used to produce bulk amorphous Zr55Al10Ni5Cu30 rings. The 1-mm thick amorphous ring of the Zr55Al10Ni5Cu30 alloy was successfully prepared by this method. With increasing thickness of the rings, no crystalline phase can be seen on the transverse section near the outer surface of the rings. However, Zr2Cu and Zr2Ni particles precipitated from the amorphous matrix near the inner surface for the rings with thicknesses of 1.5 or 2 mm. For the 1 mm thick ring, the hardness showed no evident variation along the whole cross section. The hardness increased with increasing distance from the outer surface to the inner surface for the rings with thicknesses of 1.5 and 2 mm. Centrifugal casting is a useful process to produce amorphous alloy parts, such as amorphous tube and graded amorphous matrix composites.