Numerical and experimental study of electrovortex flow and temperature field in liquid metal with bifilar power supply

Abstract

Controlling of electrovortex flows of liquid metal in a confined vessel is an essential feature of electrometallurgical technologies and aggregates, such as stirring, welding, electroslag remelting, electrical arc furnaces, etc. In the present study, the numerical model developed by the authors in previous studies has been improved to compute turbulent velocity and temperature fields for electrovortex flows of liquid metal in an experimental setup with the bifilar direct current supply over two fully submerged electrodes. Melt velocity and temperature fields were measured by applying a thermal-correlation method. The measured and computed results were compared. A good qualitative and quantitative agreement between the experimentally obtained data and the numerical computation results for the velocity field in several setup zones was found. Tables 2, Figs 8, Refs 16.