Investigation on the effect of electrode tip on formation of metal droplets and temperature profile in a vibrating electrode electroslag remelting process

Abstract

Abstract In the present work, a transient full-coupled modelling approach has been put forward to study the effect of electrode tip on formation of metal droplets and temperature profile in the electromagnetically-controlled electroslag-remelting furnace with vibrating electrode. The electromagnetic field, momentum and energy conservation equations are solved simultaneously based on the finite volume method. The interface of slag and metal is traced using the volume of fluid approach. The results show that in the case of cone tip electrode the average dimension of metal droplets is smaller compared to the flat tip electrode. In addition, the bigger and stretched metal droplets are not observed with the cone tip electrode. The temperature fields with the cone tip electrode are distributed in a prominent periodic pattern compared to the case with flat tip electrode. The maximum temperature zone with the cone tip electrode is located along the z axial in the upper part of slag, not in the lower part. When the frequency changes from 0.17 Hz to 1 Hz, the maximum temperature reduces from 2050 K to 1985 K and the peak value of velocity decreases from 0.20 m/s to 0.125 m/s. When the vibration amplitude varies from 3mm to 6mm, the maximum temperature in the slag cover drops by 3.9% and the peak value of velocity rises by 16.7%.