Hirofumi KASAHARA
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry

Abstract

There are many benefits that can be achieved to uniformly refine and concentrate the components of crystals through stirring systems in material processing. Among the stirring systems that are available, electromagnetic stirring systems are known to be highly effective, especially electromagnetic tornado stirring systems, because they can control the flow of fluids three dimensionally. The application of electromagnetic stirring systems using conventional copper magnets is minimal due to high operation costs caused by the large Joule losses that occur. By replacing the copper magnets with AC superconducting magnets, manufacturing of highly concentrated Si aluminum alloy capable of miniaturization as engine materials in automobiles and airplanes becomes possible through energy conservation and powerful Lorentz force. The performance of a tornado stirring system was evaluated by producing a superconducting electromagnetic stirring system for electromagnetic stirring that has rotational stirring, vertical stirring, and tornado stirring which combines both rotational and vertical stirring. In addition, the analysis results for the magnetic field and electromagnetic force produced using JMAG-Designer 10.3 by modeling the molten metal and superconducting magnets was compared to the test results.
The effects of rotational stirring, vertical stirring, and electromagnetic tornado stirring were evaluated using metal gallium, which are melting at room temperature, with an electromagnetic tornado stirring system. This showed conclusively that the analysis results obtained in JMAG and the test results matched.