Numerical analysis and experimental verification for heat transfer process of electrostatically levitated alloy droplets

A mathematical model was proposed to study the heat transfer process of electrostatically levitated alloy droplets to relieve the experimental complexity of temperature measurement during containerless processing. The finite volume method (FVM) assisted with implicit time integration scheme was developed to numerically solve the heat transfer model with arbitrary droplet shapes and complicated boundary conditions. The reliability of this proposed method was confirmed by a numerical example with analytical solution. Taking Ti₄₅Ni₅₅ alloy droplet as an example, the essential parameters of heat transfer process including the temperature distribution, cooling rate and temperature gradient were obtained. Besides, the acquired temperature distribution within metallic droplets with two- to seven-lobed shapes shows the universal adaptability for dealing with the heat transfer process of arbitrarily shaped droplets. Moreover, the cooling curves of different metal and alloy droplets with various shapes were experimentally measured, which show good consistency with the calculated results.