Free-surface flow in horizontally rotating cylinder: experiment and simulation

Abstract

The horizontal centrifugal casting process targets on a liquid layer with a uniform thickness. To achieve this, the rotations of the mold have to be large enough so that the liquid can pick up the speed of the mold. In the present paper, an experiment was conducted using a laboratory plexi-glass mold with water as a working fluid. Starting with an initial volume fraction of liquid resting in the bottom of the mold, the mold rotations were gradually increased from 0 rpm to max rpm and a new position of the contact line was recorded. In addition, first critical rpm was recorded, at which the transition from the liquid pool to a uniform liquid layer occurred. While gradually going back from max rpm to 0 rpm, second critical rpm was recorded, at which the uniform liquid layer collapsed. The experiment was compared with the numerical simulation solving the modified shallow water equations using the Newton-Raphsonmethod with the Wallington filter.