The high-temperature properties of microstructure transitions in liquid metal Al

A molecular dynamics simulation study on the high-temperature properties of the microstructure transitions of liquid metal Al has been performed during the rapid heating process. The changes of the atomic bond-types are obtained. It is demonstrated that the degree of icosahedral order decreases, the degree of rhombohedral and 'free-state' bond-types increases, while the relative weight of the 'cubic'-like bonding does not change. From the viewpoint that a type of cluster defined by the Honeycutt-Andersen bond-type index should correspond to a certain degree of order, these results are discussed in detail. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.