Distributed Temperature and Gap Measurements at the Metal-Mold Interface during Aluminum Casting using Optical Fiber Sensors
Abstract
Novel methods for quantifying the interfacial heat transfer at the mold-metal interface of a casting during solidification are of great interest to improve the performance of solidification models. In the current work, real-time measurements of the mold gap and the thermal profile in the vicinity of the mold wall were conducted during solidification using two novel fiber optic sensors in a permanent mold casting of A356 aluminum. This data was employed to modify the heat transfer definition in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and heat transfer simulation software package to adjust the model predictions to improve agreement with the measured values. Optical fiber enclosed in a fine stainless-steel tube was used to measure the temperature distribution in real-time (77 ms) at a spatial resolution of 0.65mm across the mold cavity and within the mold walls using Rayleigh scattering technology. In addition, a cleaved optical fiber was embedded into the mold wall to measure the evolving gap between the mold wall and the surface of the casting during solidification based on the Fabry-Perot interference principle. The gap at the mold-metal interface strongly influences the heat transfer, which affects the solidification and cooling rate of the casting. This combination of high-resolution temperature profile measurement and gap evolution measurement is expected to provide new insights into the interfacial heat transfer conditions encountered in various casting processes and improve the accuracy of future interfacial heat transfer models.
Recommended Citation
Neelakandan, Deva Prasaad; Roman, Muhammad; Balogun, Damilola; Alla, Dinesh Reddy; Zhu, Chen; Bartlett, Laura; Gerald, Rex; Huang, Jie; and O'Malley, Ronald J., "Distributed Temperature and Gap Measurements at the Metal-Mold Interface during Aluminum Casting using Optical Fiber Sensors" (2022). PSMRC Faculty Research. 16.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/psmrc_facwork/16
Department(s)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Second Department
Materials Science and Engineering
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 AFS Cast Expo Metalcasting Congress, All Rights Reserved
Publication Date
23-28 April, 2022
