Tzanakis, I., Lebon, G.S.B., Eskin, D.G. and Pericleous, K. ORCID: 0000-0002-7426-9999 (2015) Investigation of the factors influencing cavitation intensity during the ultrasonic treatment of molten aluminium. Materials and Design, 90. 979 - 983. ISSN 0261-3069 (doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2015.11.010)

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Abstract

The application of ultrasound to casting processes is a subject of great interest: the resulting degassing, sonocrystallization, wetting, fragmentation, de-agglomeration and dispersion yield an improved cast material with fine grain structure. However, due to the lack of understanding of certain fundamentals involved in the process, the transfer and scale-up of this promising technology to industry has been hindered by difficulties in treating large volumes of liquid metal. Experimental results of ultrasonic processing of liquid aluminium with a 5-kW magnetostrictive transducer and a 20-mm niobium sonotrode producing 17-kHz ultrasonic waves are reported in this study. A high-temperature cavitometer sensor that is placed at different locations in the liquid melt, measured cavitation activity at various acoustic power levels and in different temperature ranges. The highest cavitation intensity in the liquid bulk is achieved below the surface of the sonotrode, at the lowest temperature, and when the applied power was 3.5 kW. Understanding these ultrasonication mechanisms in liquid metals will result in a major breakthrough for the optimization of ultrasound applications in metal industries.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Open Access funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under Creative Commons License - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Ultrasonic treatment; Aluminium; Cavitation bubbles; Frequency spectrum; Acoustic pressure
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis (CNMPA) > Computational Science & Engineering Group (CSEG) Faculty of Engineering & Science > School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences (CMS) Faculty of Engineering & Science
Last Modified:	04 Mar 2022 13:07
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/14192

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