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Rotary Stirring of Liquid Metal without Free Surface Deformation by Combination of Rotational and Vertical Traveling Magnetic Fields – Development of Hybrid Stirrer – S.Taniguchi1*, K.Maitake2, M.Okubo2, T.Ando2 and K.Ueno2 1: Graduate School of Environmental Studies 2: Graduate School of Engineering Tohoku University Sendai, Japan Abstract An electromagnetic rotary stirrer without free surface deformation is proposed and its performance is investigated. This stirrer is composed of two sets of 3-phase coils which impose rotational and vertical traveling magnetic fields in a liquid metal simultaneously. Free surface shapes, rotational speeds, and velocities of liquid gallium are measured for three cases; rotary stirring, vertical linear stirring, and hybrid stirring. It is found that the hybrid stirrer realizes flat free surface at high rotational speed and strong turbulence in liquid metal. Introduction Stirring of liquid metal has been applied to realize various metallurgical purposes like homogenization of temperature and chemical composition, increase in refining rates, and enhancement of inclusion removal. In steelmaking processes, strong stirring is recently noticed again to keep the production rate by curtailed equipments [1]. In the field of recycling processes, the strong stirring is expected to achieve quick melting of metal scraps and separation of nonmetallics [2]. Furthermore, in the field of foundry, semisolid casting under intense stirring is expected to realize fine microstructures [3]. Electromagnetic (em) stirring is an exceptional method to impose strong agitation in liquid metal without contact. Among various em stirrers, rotary stirrers are well developed and widely applied from laboratory-scale to commercial scale equipments [4]. However, the strong centrifugal force results in the limitation of the power input because of the free surface deformation and the weak mixing due to the suppression of turbulence [5]. The purpose of the present study is to develop a new rotary stirrer that enables to enhance mixing under the suppression of the free surface deformation. Principle Figure 1 indicates a helical induction stirrer proposed by Vives [6]. A cylinder on which permanent magnets are arranged helically is rotated around a liquid metal container. In this case, the metal will receive not only rotational forces but also vertical forces. As a result, the deformation of the free surface of the metal will be suppressed as seen in case (a) of Fig.1. Stimulated by this excellent idea, Ueno et al. [7] proposed a liquid metal pump composed of helical coils which generate rotating twisted magnetic field. Figure 2 shows the principle of this em pump. * s-tanig@material.tohoku.ac.jp Associated Web site: http://www.material.tohoku.ac.jp/~kino/lab%20eng.html Proceedings of the Electromagnetic Processing of Materials International Conference 2003 Fig.1. Helical induction stirrer proposed by Vives.[6] (a) (b) Based on the above works, the performance of two types of rotary stirrer is investigated. One is the application of the above two principles to a rotary stirrer (case-1), and the other is a hybrid rotary stirrer composed of two coil systems; one is for a rotational traveling field and the other is for a vertical traveling field, each of which the current is regulated independently (case-2). (1) Case-1 In the case of em pump, two-pole coil system is adopted to impose uniform em forces to liquid metal. However, in the case of rotary stirrer, downward forces should be localized in the outer area where the metal surface is raised. For this purpose, 4-pole-coil system is adopted. Twelve pieces of oblong coils are arranged around the outside of the metal container so as to be inclined at an angle of 45 degrees. (2) Case-2 Figure 3 shows a schematic of the coil arrangement for case2. For axially traveling magnetic field, 6-pieces of circular coils were arranged to generate a 2-pole magnetic field. Outside these coils, six pieces of oblong coil for rotationally traveling magnetic field are arranged along circumference to form 2-pole magnetic field. High frequency currents are imposed to the former coils to establish a downward flow only in the outer region of the melt by using the skin effect. Measurements Electric currents were led from a 50-Hz power source to the coil system of case-1 and that for rotational flow in case-2. To the coil system for vertical flow in case-2, high frequency currents were led through an inverter regulator with variable frequencies. Liquid gallium was contained in a plastic crucible with 50-55 mm inside diameter and 100 mm liquid metal height. Coil systems were fixed in an annular glass vessel filled with cooling oil. Free surface shapes were measured by an electrical probe method in which a tungsten wire was used for the contact probe. The rotational speed of the liquid metal was measured from the rotational speed of an impeller which was immersed in the liquid metal. Vives probe was applied to measure the velocities of the liquid metal. In the measurements, a low pass filter was adopted to remove the noise from the traveling magnetic field generated by the coil system. Fig.2. E.M. pump proposed by Ueno et al.[2] Regulator-1 Liquid metal Crucible Coil for Vertical Flow Regulator-2 Coil for Rotation Coil for Rotation Coil for Vertical Fow Metal Fig.3. Schematic of hybrid electromagnetic stirrer. Results (1) Case-1 Figure 4 describes the free surface profiles measured by the electrical probe method for case-1. Two different directions of traveling magnetic field are examined, one is upward and the other is downward direction. For both directions, profiles of free surface are almost same, namely, deep depression is formed by the centrifugal force due to strong rotational motion. From these results, the vertical flow is found to be so weak that the free surface deformation is not suppressed for case-1. This may be attributed to the larger resistance of vertical flow than that of rotational flow. It seems difficult to regulate the angle of coil inclination to make the both flows comparable. From these results, it is concluded that the rotary stirrer of case-1 is insufficient for the function to keep flat free surface during rotation even though it needs not two power sources like in case-2. (2) Case-2 The observed free surface profiles during stirring are shown in Fig.5. For the case of rotary stirring (Fig.5(a)), free surface depression is clearly seen. On the contrary, for the case of hybrid stirring (Fig.5(b)), the depression is reduced remarkably. (a) rotary stirring (b) hybrid stirring Fig.5. Observed free surface profiles for hybrid stirring of liquid gallium with and without vertical flow (Case-2) Free surface profiles measured by the electrical probe are indicated in Fig.6. For the case of rotary stirring, the difference in the height of free surface between center and rim reaches 10 mm. On the other hand, it decreases down to 2 mm for hybrid stirring. The skin depth, (2/µeωσ)1/2, of liquid gallium is 36 mm for rotary stirring (50 Hz) and 7.14 mm for vertical stirring (1300 Hz), respectively. Figure 7 shows the relation between rotational speed of liquid gallium and imposed current in the coil for rotation. The rotational speed in the hybrid stirring is found to be smaller than that in the rotary stirring, nevertheless, the difference is less than 20%. Although these results indicate the rotational speed inside the liquid gallium, the rotation of free surface is also confirmed by observation. Measured velocities of liquid gallium with Vives probe are shown in Fig.8 (a)-(c) for the cases of vertical stirring, rotationalstirring, and hybrid stirring. In the case of the vertical stirring, Fig.8 (a), magnetic field moves downward. There can be seen vigorous fluctuation composed of not only short period (less than 1 second) but also long period (several seconds). The short period fluctuation seems to be turbulence of liquid flow, and, on the other hand, the long priod fluctuation may be formed by the interference between downward and upward flows generated in the liquid gallium. On the -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 400Hz, 3.65A H ei gh t/m m Radius/mm Upward Downward Fig.4. Free surface profiles for case-1. contrary, there can be seen very small fluctuation for the case of simple rotational stirring, Fig.8 (b). For the case of rotational stirring, as Spitzer et al.[5] pointed out, the rotational speed in the outer region is faster than that in the inner region, so that turbulent flow is hard to be generated. In such case, mixing of liquid metal will be insufficient even if a higher power is imposed. Finally, Fig.8 (c) indicates the case of hybrid stirring. In this case, the level of turbulence is comparable to the vertical stirring (Fig.8 (a)) and the long period fluctuation seen in the vertical stirring disappears completely. Such tendency was also seen in the observation of the free surface fluctuation. Conclusions The present study has been carried out to develop a new rotary stirrer without free surface depression that is an essential problem in conventional rotary stirrers if a strong stirring is needed. The following results are obtained. 0 5 10 15 20 25 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 H ei gh t/m m Radius/mm Rotatry stirring Hybrid stirring 7 8 9 10 11 12 200 250 300 350 400 R ot at io n sp ee d /rp m Current(rotation) /A Rotary stirring Hybrid stirring Fig.6. Free surface profiles for case-2. 50Hz, 7.5A for rotary stirring, 1300Hz, 12A for vertical stirring. Fig.7. Rotational speed as a function of imposed current for rotary and hybrid stirring. Fig.8. Velocities of liquid gallium measured by Vives probe for (a) vertical stirring, (b) rotational stirring, and (c) hybrid stirring. 0 5 10 15 -100 -50 0 50 (a) Velocity in z-direction Average:-25.7 cm/s Downward (1300Hz,12A) Ax ia l v el oc ity /c m s -1 Time/s 0 5 10 15 -50 0 50 100 (b) Velocity in θ-direction Average:29.1cm/s Rotation (50Hz,7.5A) C irc um fe re nt ia l v el oc ity /c m s -1 Time/s 0 5 10 15 -100 -50 0 50 (c) Velcity in z-direction Average: -12.7 cm/s Hybrid: downward(1300Hz,12A) rotation(50Hz,7.5A) Ax ia l v el oc ity /c m s -1 Time/s (1) A stirrer with helical coils of which the angle of inclination is 45 degrees is examined of its performance by using liquid gallium. Free surface profile measured by an electrical probe is not improved at all. It is thought that the flow resistance in the circumference direction is much smaller than that in the vertical direction, and as a result, the vertical flow which is expected to lower the raised surface in the outer region does not work well. (2) A hybrid stirrer composed of two coil systems generating vertical and rotational flow, is proposed and its performance is examined. The profile of the free surface of liquid gallium measured by an electrical probe is found to be almost flat if the downward flow is generated in the outer area of the liquid metal. (3) Rotational speed of liquid gallium measured by an impeller immersed in a liquid metal is slightly smaller in the case of hybrid stirring compared with the case of rotary stirring. (4) Liquid velocities are measured by Vives probe. For the case of vertical stirring without rotation, there can be seen a strong turbulence accompanied by long period fluctuations. This long period fluctuation also appears as the vigorous free surface oscillation. For the case of simple rotary stirring, the level of turbulence is quite small because of the suppressing effect of turbulence in a rotating flow filed. For the case of hybrid stirring, strong turbulence is observed but the long period fluctuation is not observed. This means that the hybrid stirring is able to generate intense turbulence without free surface deformation or oscillation. Acknowledgment This study was partly supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Grant- in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas (1998-2001). References [1] The Division of High-Temperature Processes, ISIJ, Innovative Propositions to Achieve High Efficiency in Refining and Solidification Processes, ISIJ, 2002. [2] T.Ozono, Research and Development of Advanced Technology on Recycling of Aluminum Materials, The Journal of Japan Institute of Light Metals, 50 (9) (2000) 468-474. [3] O.J.Ilegbusi, J.Szekely, Mathematical Representation of the Velocity, Temperature and Solid Fraction in an Electromagnetically Stirred Solidifying Melt, ISIJ International, 30 (5) (1990) 372- 380. [4] Y.Miki, H.Shibata, N.Bessho, Y.Kishimoto, K.Sorimachi and T.Hirota, Cleaning Molten Steel with the Centrifugal Flow Tundish, Tetsu-to-Hagane, 86 (4) (2000) 239-246. [5] K.H.Spitzer, M.Dubke and K.Schwerdtfeger, Rotational Electromagnetic Stirring in Continuous Casting of Round Strands, Metall. Trans.,B, 17B (March) (1986) 119-131. [6] C.Vives, Mew Electromagnetic Manufacturing Processes for Semisolid Alloys and Metal Matrix Composites Synthesis, Proc. of Int. Symp. on EPM, EPM’94, Nagoya, (1994), 223. [7] T.Ando, K.Ueno, S.Taniguchi and T.Takagi: Induction Pump for High-Temperature Molten Metals Using Rotating Twisted Magnetic Field, IEEE Transactions of Magnetics, 38 (4) (2002) 1789-1796.
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