DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF INGOT CASTING WHEELS USING SMOOTHED PARTICLE HYDRODYNAMIC MODELLING AND EXPERIMENTS

摘要

In aluminum re-melt ingot casting, the quality of ingots produced can depend to a large extent on the wheel and nozzle design. The nature of the flow through the wheel and nozzle can result in increased exposure of aluminum to air thus increasing the amount of dross (oxide) in the system. This oxide reduces the quality and surface finish of the ingots that are finally formed. At present there is no way of experimentally evaluating the amount of oxide present in the ingots and pilot scale experimentation is expensive and difficult. The challenge addressed here is to develop better wheel designs that operate at higher flow rates and reduce the extent of oxide generation. The grid-free Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method was used as the primary computational modeling tool with full scale testing using a pilot caster setup to complement the modeling. In this paper, we report on the various stages of design modifications to the wheel and nozzle based on results obtained from earlier designs finally leading to an optimized wheel design. The new wheel is able to operate at 50% higher throughput with an expected reduction in the oxide content of around 53% compared to that of the original wheel design.