A NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE FREQUENCY OF THE APPLIED AC CURRENT ON THE ELECTROSLAG REMELTING PROCESS

摘要

Most conventional electroslag remelting (ESR) processes are operated with AC current, but the inductive loss of the power becomes a major problem when the process is operated at the high frequency for large scale ESR. Nowadays, the demand on large scale ingots has driven the people to think of operating the process with AC current at low frequency. Here the influence of the applied frequency of AC current on the large scale ESR process is numerically investigated. For this purpose, simulations with two operating AC frequencies (0.2 and 50 Hz) are performed. The main goal is to achieve some fundamental understanding of the two-phase flow and the formation of melt pool of the solidifying ingot under the influence of AC frequency. As we also know that the mold current (portion of electric current entering through solid slag skin into the mold) plays an important role in the process, calculations considering different current paths are also analyzed.