ENERGY EFFICIENT PRODUCTION OF SHEET MATERIAL USING RADIANT ARC-LAMP HEATING

摘要

Radiant arc-lamp heating offers the potential for direct production of melted sheet products and foil. A focused 300 kW arc lamp provides incident radiant heat at a flux of up to 3kW/cm~2. The melting of sheet and foils of metals, intermetallic alloys and composite materials has been achieved. The process offers the advantages of: 1) high efficiency of conversion of electrical energy to absorbed incident energy, 2) the ability to transmit radiant energy through a quart/ window enabling environmental isolation of processed material, and 3) processing of large areas of material at rates of the order of 10 cm~2/s. Current research efforts include control of grain structure and texture in the solidified sheet and numerical modeling of melting and solidification of sheet materials.