Abstract
Ultrasonic treatment (UST) and its effects, primarily cavitation and acoustic streaming, are useful for a high range of industrial applications, e.g., welding, filtering, cleaning or emulsification. In the metallurgy and foundry industry, UST can be used to modify a material’s microstructure by treating metal in the liquid or semi-solid state. Cavitation (formation, pulsating growth and implosion of tiny bubbles) and its shock waves, released during the implosion of the cavitation bubbles, are able to break forming structures and thus refine them. In this context, especially aluminium alloys are in the focus of the investigations. Aluminium alloys, e.g., A356, have a significantly wide range of industrial applications in automotive, aerospace and machine engineering, and UST is an effective and comparatively clean technology for its treatment. In recent years, the efforts for simulating the complex mechanisms of UST are increasing, and approaches for computing the complex cavitation dynamics below the radiator during high intensity ultrasonic treatment have come up. In this study, the capabilities of the established CFD simulation tool FLOW-3D to simulate the formation and dynamics of acoustic cavitation in aluminium A356 are investigated. The achieved results demonstrate the basic capability of the software to calculate the above-mentioned effects. Thus, the investigated software provides a solid basis for further development and integration of numerical models into an established software environment and could promote the integration of the simulation of UST in industry.
Highlights
Cavitation, caused by high-intensity ultrasonic treatment (UST), is used in a wide range of industrial applications and becomes more and more interesting for metallurgy and foundry processes
Extreme pressure amplitudes are induced by an immersed sonotrode through high-frequency sinusoidal mechanical vibration, which causes the formation of cavitation bubbles during the phase of negative pressure amplitudes, pulsating growth and the collapse of cavities accompanied by energy release in the form of shock waves [1,10,11,12]
While we presented a comprehensive approach for the simulation of UST in [27], the study lacked a detailed investigation of cavitation dynamics
Summary
Cavitation, caused by high-intensity ultrasonic treatment (UST), is used in a wide range of industrial applications and becomes more and more interesting for metallurgy and foundry processes. It can be used as an effective method for modifying a material’s microstructure and to improve the material’s mechanical properties [1,2]. In the context of the treatment of aluminium alloys, many investigations were conducted in the last 20 years. Aluminium and its alloys are thereby of primary importance as they are used for the manufacturing of a wide variety of industrial components in automotive, aerospace, shipping and mechanical engineering. Since the Metals 2020, 10, 1529; doi:10.3390/met10111529 www.mdpi.com/journal/metals
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