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Authors: Tareq Eddir (Fluxtrol Inc.), Robert C. Goldstein (Fluxtrol Inc.), Robert Haun (Anspanner LLC)
Location/Venue: UIE 2021 Pilsen, Czech Republic
Outline
- Cold Wall Induction Billet Casters background
- Geometry Description
- Simulation Description
- Electrical Parameter Results
- Current Density Results
- Conclusions
Background
- Titanium powder production has increased substantially for additive manufacturing and the aerospace industry
- Powder is manufactured via techniques such as EIGA, which results in a relatively non-uniform powder size
- Additive manufacturing of titanium parts requires uniform powder sizes, resulting in low yields of acceptable powder sizes
- Rejected powder is recycled through cold wall billet casters
- The cold wall design results in low electrical efficiency
- Soft magnetic composites have shown to increase efficiency of cold crucibles and may help reduce power demand in billet casters as well
Geometry Description
Powder Titanium is deposited from the top onto a billet being slowly pulled. The molten top of the billet (dashed circle) is heated through an induction heating coil. The black arrows indicate current direction in the coil, caster fingers, and load. The fingers are individually water-cooled to extract heat from the Joule losses and heat from transferred from the load.
Simulation Description
Flux 3D FEM software was used for the simulation
- 3D geometry was used
- Electromagnetic physics was used
- 1000ARMS at 5 kHz was used for all simulations
- Load resistivity of 1.7 µΩm was used
- Fluxtrol 100 soft magnetic composite was used for the magnetic inserts, rings, and shunts
- 1/24th of the geometry was modelled using symmetry planes
Electrical Results
| Case | U | PLoad | PCoil | PMold | PSMC | η |
| Bare | 7.9 | 368 | 280 | 612 | 0 | 29.2% |
| Inserts | 9.1 | 634 | 268 | 647 | 4 | 40.8% |
| Rings and Inserts | 9.8 | 714 | 279 | 733 | 7.7 | 41.2% |
| Rings and Shunts | 9.4 | 435 | 316 | 771 | 29 | 28.0% |
| Rings, Shunts, and Inserts | 11.1 | 824 | 328 | 872 | 47 | 39.8% |
Where:
- η is efficiency
- U is potential in V
- P is power in W
- SMC is Soft Magnetic Composite (Rings, Inserts, and Shunts)
Load Current Density Contour
Mold Current Density Contour
Normalized Current Density Graphs
Conclusions
- 3D simulations were made to predict the electrical parameters of different cases
- The results show using soft magnetic composites for cold wall billet casters increases the electrical efficiency
- Adding rings and shuts on the coil showed no benefit on the efficiency
- When considering chamber heating and size, rings and shunts can be beneficial
- Addition of inserts to the billet caster increases efficiency by ~10%
- Adding rings and shuts on the coil showed no benefit on the efficiency
- An existing mold design was considered, further improvements may be achieved with an optimized design
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