Authors: Akshay Bansal Pierre Chapelle Yves Delannoy Emmanuel Waz Pierre Le Brun Jean Pierre Bellot
Publish Date: 2015/07/09
Volume: 46, Issue: 5, Pages: 2096-2109
Abstract
In an induction furnace as a result of electromagnetic forces the free surface of a liquid aluminum bath deforms and takes the form of a dome The oxide layer that forms spontaneously on the free surface of aluminum melts may also influence the deformation by exerting an additional friction force on the metal A nonintrusive experimental technique—Structured Light Fringe Projection—was used to measure the complete surface deformation and its fluctuations for a varying set of operating parameters—inductor current intensity and initial liquid metal filling level inside the crucible For an axisymmetric geometry numerical simulations were carried out to calculate in a single framework i the electromagnetic forces using the A–V formulation ii the free surface deformation using the Volume of Fluid method and iii the turbulent stirring of the metal using a RANSbased k–ω model The friction force due to the oxide layer was modeled by imposing a pseudowall condition on the free surface which makes the interfacial velocity very small compared to the average liquid metal pool velocity A marked impact on the dome height due to applied friction force is observed Finally comparisons between the predicted and measured domes are presented
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