Numerical investigation on the effect of axial magnetic field on metallurgical quality of ingots during vacuum arc remelting process

Abstract

The electromagnetic stirring force generated by the axial magnetic field (AMF) interacting with the process current greatly affects the solidification process and consequently the metallurgical quality of ingots, but there are few studies about the effect of AMF on the multi-physics field involving solute transport during VAR process. Based on this, a three-dimensional full-size transient model has been developed to investigate the role of AMF on the metallurgical quality evaluated by the segregation defect and solidification quality in this paper. All essential considerations of the fluid flow, heat transfer and solute transport are incorporated in the model. Both the local solidification time (LST) and secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS) are adopted as indexes to characterize the solidification quality. The results show that the stirring force caused by the AMF greatly promotes the downward heat transfer and thus leads to deeper molten pool. The final value of volume-averaged segregation extent is greatly reduced by 24.13% as the AMF intensity increases from 0 to 50 G, while the difference of this value between 50 G and 100 G is only 1.96%. The volume-averaged values of the LST and SDAS are all reduced with the increase of AMF intensity, in which both values change from 1088 s to 190 μm without AMF to 890 s and 182 μm under 100 G. These results indicate that the application of AMF can significantly improve the metallurgical quality of ingots, but this effect becomes more and more limited with the increase of AMF intensity.

Keywords

• Axial magnetic field
• Vacuum arc remelting
• Ni-based superalloy
• Segregation defect
• Metallurgical quality