Physical characteristics of electromagnetic levitation processing

Abstract

Electromagnetic levitation has developed from a pure physical phenomenon into a practical containerless processing technique in the fields of both applied physics and materials science. In order to obtain a better understanding of this processing technique, two typical levitation coils were designed and the physical characteristics in levitation droplets suspended in these two coils, such as electromangetic field, levitation force field, total levitation force, and power absorption, were analyzed numerically and calculated in this paper. It was found that the eddy current density, together with the magnetic flux density and levitation force density, increases rapidly with radius as it approaches sample surface. The maximum levitation force produced by coil A is larger than that of coil B, whereas the levitated sample can obtain less power absorption at the equilibrium position in the former coil than that in the latter one. Moreover, the calculated results also demonstrated that the levitation ability decreases as the atomic number increases. The larger the material’s electrical resistivity, the easier the samples can obtain more power absorption. PACC: 4110F; 1220; 6470D; 0260