Semester of Graduation

Fall 2018

Degree

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MSME)

Department

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The spherical metal particles produced from the centrifugal atomization process have been the topic of numerous theoretical, experimental and numerical studies from the past few years. This atomization process uses centrifugal force to break-up molten material into spherical droplets, which are quenched into solidified granules by the flow of cold air on the spherical droplets. In the present work, a transient three-dimensional multiphase CFD model is applied to three different materials: Molten slag, aqueous glycerol solution, and molten Ni-Nb to study the influence of the dimensionless parameters on the centrifugal atomization outcome.

Results from numerical experiments indicated that the droplet size, ligament length of a slag material increases with an increase in Ekman number while keeping the other two parameters effectively unaltered. The observed increase of the droplet size with increase in Ekman number is due to the decrease of applied atomization energy on the thin liquid film at the edge of the spinning disk. The droplet size, ligament length also increases by decreasing the Ohnesorge number due to a higher resistance offered by surface tension forces to the liquid disintegration process. The droplet size, ligament length values also increased as the Reynolds number was increased.

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Date

10-16-2018

Committee Chair

Nikitopoulos, Dimitris E

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.4811

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