Abstract
The heterogeneous melting kinetics of polycrystalline aluminum is investigated by a theoretical model which represents the overall melting rate as a functional of the Weibull grain-size-distribution. It is found that the melting process is strongly affected by the mean-grain-diameter, but is insensitive to the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution. The temperature-time-transformation (TTT) diagrams are calculated to probe dependence of the characteristic timescale of melting on the overheating temperature and the mean-grain-diameter. The model predicts that the heterogeneous melting time of polycrystalline aluminum exponentially depends on temperature in high temperature range and the exponent constant is an intrinsic material constant independent of the mean-grain-diameter. Comparisons between TTT diagrams of heterogeneous melting and homogenous melting are also provided.