In this paper, we investigate the reliability of estimating of inclusion size distribution and number density in steel by using stereological methods. The magnitude of the inclusion concentration in steel is evaluated by the total oxygen and the assumed average inclusion sizes. The principles of Schwartz-Saltykov (SS) and modified SS (MSS) methods are introduced. A simulation model is developed to disperse particles with a predefined particle size distribution (PSD) randomly into a three dimensional (3D) space. A series of test planes are generate to measure the two dimensional (2D) PSD and particle number density (PND) on the cross-sections (CS). The SS and MSS methods are applied to investigate the reliability of the translation between the 3D and 2D information of the system, such as the 2D and 3D PSD and PND. The influence of predefined 3D PSD on the reliability of the stereological methods are studied, such as mono sized, lognormal and normal distributions. The effect of the representative group diameters in the discretized groups for SS and MSS methods is investigated as well.

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a b s t r a c tA new method for producing uniformly sized metal droplets is proposed. In this method, an intermittent electromagnetic pinch force is applied to a capillary jet of liquid metal to generate fluctuations of equal interval on the surface of the jet. As the fluctuations grow, the liquid metal jet breaks into small droplets whose size depends on the frequency of the intermittent electromagnetic pinch force. The breakup of the capillary jet is numerically simulated by performing multiphase fluid flow analysis with surface tracking (volume of fluid method) and electromagnetic force analysis. The simulation results agree well with the results of model experiments. The jet breaks up into uniformly sized droplets when the frequency of the intermittent force equals the frequency that corresponds to the natural disturbance wavelength of the capillary jet.

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