Moller, HeinrichGovender, GonasagrenRossouw, PierreStumpf, Waldo E.2011-11-182011-11-182011Möller, H, Govender, G, Rossouw, P & Stumpf, W 2011, 'The influence of prior natural aging on the subsequent artificial aging response of aluminium alloy A356 with respective globular and dendritic microstructures', Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, vol. 2011, article ID. 375150, pp 1-6.1687-8434 (print)1687-8442 (online)10.1155/2011/375150http://hdl.handle.net/2263/17608Alloy A356 is one of the most popular alloys used for semisolid metal forming. The heat treatment cycles that are currently applied to semisolid processed components are mostly those that are in use for dendritic casting alloys. The assumption has been made that these heat treatments are not necessarily the optimum treatments, as the difference in solidification history and microstructure of SSM processed components should be considered. The objective of this study is to determine whether dendritic A356 behaves in a similar way to globular A356 in terms of its response to artificial aging with or without prior natural aging. The results indicate that the differences in microstructures (globular or dendritic) do not have a noteworthy effect on the heat treatment response. It is also shown that strong linear correlations are found between T4 and T6 hardness and wt% Mg of A356, regardless of the casting technique used.enCopyright © 2011 Heinrich Möller et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Natural agingArtificial agingAlloy A356Semisolid metal formingGlobular or dendritic microstructuresAluminum alloys -- Heat treatmentAluminum alloys -- MetallurgyAluminum alloys -- MicrostructureArticle