DESIGN AND SIMULATION OF A SPECIAL MEDIUM POWER INDUCTION HEATING SYSTEM FOR OXYGEN FREE COPPER PRODUCTION

For sustainability purposes this project is studying the recycling of copper scrap. It is intended to melt a copper in oxygen free environment to achieve a highly conducting copper suitable for electrical installation and bus-bars manufacturing. Such a project must be started by a design and simulation step. Since the furnace composed of two main parts, the power supply and the induction coil, the power supply is a current fed inverter (CFI) simulated using Matlab, and the induction coil simulated by Finite Element Method (FEM) using ANSYS computer package. The induction coil design of this project is a special task due to the limitation of the maximum output voltage of the available power supply. The results approve the visibility of the system to be implemented in near future.

3D Simulation of an Automotive Wheel Hub and Induction Hardening Coil to Solve Coil Lifetime Issues

This paper will revisit a case study originally done for ASM HTS Conference in 2009. The goal then was to solve an induction coil lifetime issue of an induction coil for heat treatment of an automotive wheel hub. At the time, computer simulation was beginning to allow for full virtual prototyping of heat treat applications as an alternative to experimental testing. While practical knowledge allowed for the successful determination of the cause of short coil life, and iterative simulation led to implementation of a longer lasting coil that met the required pattern, simulation was not used at the time to pinpoint the cause of failure. As faster computing becomes more widely available and finite element analysis (FEA) improves in scope and accuracy, virtual prototyping and detection of these failure modes are becoming faster and lower cost options compared to the traditional test and trial method. To highlight the leaps made in virtual prototyping, this case study that was previously done as an axisymmetric 2D model will be done in 3D electromagnetic plus thermal with rotation for the full part.

Numerical and experimental analysis of heat transfer in inductive conduction based wire metal deposition process

An inductive conduction heating process to heat the extruder in wire additive manufacturing is explored through numerical simulation and an in situ infrared imaging. The 2 D Finite Element Method (FEM) based simulation model provides insights into extruder heating in the inductive conduction heating process. The precise temperature control in the extruder can help achieve the efficient flow of material from extruder. The induction coil design variations to control the extruder temperature are computed numerically to obtain an approximate solution thus offers time and cost-saving. The presented study considers the number of turns of coil, coil radius and coil configurations as the induction coil design parameters whereas coil current, and current frequency are considered to be constant. Based on the results, the design of extruder and geometry of induction coil assembly is proposed to efficiently bring the feed material (Al-5356) to semi-solid state. A thermal imaging method is implemented using an infrared camera to analyse the evolution of thermal fields during extruder heating. Comparison of the extruder tip temperature from simulation and experiments shows an agreeable match with a variation of 8.57%.

DESIGN OF INDUCTION COIL FOR OXYGEN FREE COPPER PRODUCTION

This paper deals with the design of an induction coil (IC) intended to be used for an oxygen free copper production. This coil differs in design because it should be placed in a vacuum or in a chamber filled with noble gas, such as Argon. The designed coil must be suitable for melting the copper in this environment. The coil design means, using the simulation of the melting process to determine the best, coil geometry, type of crucible, the required current, frequency, the consumed power, and time required for this process. These results will be used to determine the parameters of the induction furnace AC power source suitable for feeding such a melting process efficiently. The Finite Element Analysis (FEA) intended to simulate the heating process to determine the best coil dimensions, and choosing the crucible. It is found that the best crucible used for the melting of copper is the carbon crucible.

Microstructure and Thermodynamic Analysis of Graphene-Reinforced Coating Surface

The microstructure of coatings with different graphene content and the hardness of cladding layer under different distance between coil and samples were investigated. The results showed that with the increase of graphene, the mean particle size of the powder did not get significantly coarser. The defects and oxides were appeared in the cladding layer and graphene diffused into the substrate. Distance between induction coil and sample has great impact on the hardness of coating, the higher hardness was measured in the distance between 6-8cm. The thermodynamic analysis of coating nucleation was carried out.