The Influence of Eddy Effect of Coils on Flow and Temperature Fields of Molten Droplet in Electromagnetic Levitation Device

Abstract

In this work, the influence of eddy effect of coils on magnetic, flow, and temperature fields in an electromagnetically levitated molten droplet was investigated by a serial of axisymmetric numerical simulations. In an electromagnetic levitation device, both metal droplet and coils are conductive materials, therefore the distributions of current density in them should be non-uniform as a result of the eddy effect. However, in previous works, the eddy effect was considered alone in metal droplet but ignored in coils usually. As the distance of coils and metal droplet is several millimetres in general, the non-uniform distribution of current density in coils actually gives important influences on calculations of magnetic, flow, and temperature fields. Here, we consider the eddy effect both in metal droplet as well as that in coils simultaneously. Lifting force, absorbed power, fluid flow, and temperature field inside a 4-mm radius molten copper droplet as a typical example are then calculated and analyzed carefully under such condition. The results show that eddy effect leads to higher magnetic force, velocity, and temperature in both levitating and melting processes than those when the eddy effect is ignored. What is more, such influence increases as the distance of droplet and coils becomes closer, which corresponds to experimental measurement. Therefore, we suggest that eddy effect of coils should be considered in numerical simulation on this topic to obtain more reliable result.