Breakup behavior of a molten metal jet

Abstract

The breakup behavior of a molten metal jet into a still gas was studied numerically. Droplet formation was modeled by imposing a sinusoidal waveform perturbation or an amplitude-modulated waveform perturbation. The effect of the temperature on the jet breakup behavior was examined by modeling the liquid metal properties, including density, viscosity, and surface tension, as a function of the temperature. The process by which a molten metal jet was ejected from an orifice exit was modeled to include the wetting of the molten metal on the orifice surface at the gas interface using a dynamic contact angle (theta(D)). The effects of the oscillation amplitude (A = 0.10-0.30), the Strouhal number (St = 0.20-0.50) and the Weber number (We = 11.63-129.19) were studied. The imposition of a periodic perturbation yielded linear or nonlinear breakup behavior in the molten metal jet. The conditions found to be optimal for the continuous generation of uniform droplets were identified by optimizing the uniformity of the main droplet, the regular distance between main droplets, the presence of satellite droplets, and the coalescence of the droplets due to surface instabilities and hydrodynamic interactions. The effects of the modulated amplitude (B) and the frequency ratio (N) on the coalescence and separation of neighboring droplets were examined.