3-D Free Surface Simulation in the Electromagnetic Dam

Abstract

A method to study the physical phenomena of the molten metal under the AC magnetic field has been required to design the electromagnetic (EM) dam system. This confines a side of the molten metal by Lorentz force without contact between the side wall and the molten metal. In this work, we have developed a numerical analysis method to predict the 3-D phenomena of the molten metal considering the free surface. To evaluate steady the state of the molten metal including the free surface, the integrated computational errors are eliminated after certain iteration step. This process avoids the solution diverged and provides the converged steady state solution. However, although the error elimination process neglects the physical phenomena of smaller scale than the elimination time step related, this method could predict slowly varying the surface shape obtained by the experiment. By using this method, the effects of magnetic field direction and the EM boundary condition on the surface shape are investigated. The profile of Lorentz force corresponding to the direction of magnetic field and boundary condition was found to affect the flow pattern resulting in the change of the steady state surface shape.