Simulation Study of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Method in Plasma Spheroidization of W-Ni-Fe Ternary Alloys
HOU Yubai1,2,3, YU Yueguang2(), GUO Zhimeng1
1.Institute for Advanced Materials and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China 2.BGRIMM Technology Group, Beijing 100160, China 3.BGRIMM Advanced Materials Science & Technology Co. , Ltd. , Beijing 102206, China
Cite this article:
HOU Yubai, YU Yueguang, GUO Zhimeng. Simulation Study of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Method in Plasma Spheroidization of W-Ni-Fe Ternary Alloys. Acta Metall Sin, 2021, 57(2): 247-256.
Metal additive manufacturing three-dimensional printing technology is widely used in the manufacturing industry. This technology is an important scientific and technological achievement in the field of world-class manufacturing, and it has influenced and changed the ways of production, which has brought great changes in the manufacturing field. The plasma spheroidization process can provide a better rate of spheroidization for refractory metals. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a mesh-less Lagrangian method to simulate a flow field and enable heat transfer. This method has shown great potential for replacing the traditional numerical methods and has been successfully used to simulate the collision and fusion process of metal droplets during plasma spheroidization. In this study, the SPH technique has been employed to simulate the collision and fusion processes of multiple metal droplets of a W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy in plasma spheroidization with the consideration of the effect of surface tension. The spheroidization process has been visualized with fluid evolution in terms of the flow field and temperature distribution. A high spheroidization quality is found in a system with the a high amount of tungsten, small tungsten particle size, high processing environment temperature, and large Marangoni force. To check the simulation results, spheroidization experiments have been conducted using the following raw materials: tungsten powder with an average particle size of 1.5 μm, nickel powder with an average particle size of 4.1 μm, and iron powder with an average particle size of 2.4 μm. The raw materials were mixed with a mass ratio of W∶Ni∶Fe=90∶7∶3 and then spheroidized at 8000oC. The achieved ternary alloy powder has high sphericity and dense internal structure. The flowability of the powders is 11.62 s/50 g. The apparent density is 10.66 g/cm3. The resulting products show high precision and good efficiency. The experiments confirm the consistency of SPH simulation. The simulation results can be used to guide development in the fabrication process of the spheroidized powder of refractory metals, such as tungsten.
Fig.1 Schematic of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy
Element
Density
Viscosity
Thermal conductivity
Surface tension coefficient
Specific heat capacity
103 kg·m-3
10-3 Pa·s
W·m-1·K-1
N·m-1
J·kg-1·K-1
Fe
7.8
6.4
40.0
2.04
460
Ni
8.9
6.0
90.7
3.10
447
W
19.3
6.5
91.3
2.50
466
Table1 The physical property parameters of materials
Model
Mass ratio of W∶Ni∶Fe
Temperature
Diameter of W
Marangoni coefficient
oC
μm
1
90∶7∶3
5000
3.0
5.8
2
85∶10.5∶4.5
3
80∶14∶6
4
90∶7∶3
5000
3.0
5.8
5
8000
6
10000
7
90∶7∶3
5000
2.5
5.8
8
3.0
9
3.5
10
90∶7∶3
5000
3.0
0.058
11
0.58
12
5.8
Table 2 The parameters of different models
Fig.2 Simulation results under different collision conditions by using SPH
Fig.3 Simulation results for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy after droplet fusion under different mass ratios of W∶Ni∶Fe (models 1-3)
Fig.4 Simulation results for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy after droplet fusion under different temperatures (models 4-6)
Fig.5 Simulation results for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy after droplet fusion under different diameters of W (models 7-9)
Fig.6 Simulation results for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy after droplet fusion under different Marangoni coefficients (models 10-12)
Model
Spheroidization ratio
Compactness
1
89.37%
96.35%
2
85.64%
80.08%
3
82.75%
97.85%
4
81.34%
96.85%
5
70.71%
97.97%
6
90.34%
98.58%
7
80.33%
98.71%
8
89.37%
96.35%
9
85.26%
97.65%
10
79.01%
96.85%
11
86.61%
97.66%
12
95.26%
100.00%
Table 3 The merging data of W-Ni-Fe droplet fusion for different models
Fig.7 The spheroidization ratio and compactness curves obtained by an interpolation method
Fig.8 SEM images of W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy before (a) and after (b) spheroidization
Fig.9 SEM image and corresponding EDS analyses for W-Ni-Fe ternary alloy after spheroidization
1
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