Inclusions Behavior Analysis during Levitation Melting of Steel in Cold Crucible for Application to Cleanliness Assessment

Abstract

Fusion of metals in a cold crucible is known as a clean melting method without contamination by refractory. For this reason, it is commonly applied to the fusion of high melting point metals or reactive materials. As the usage of the clean melting function, this technique is also applied to the cleanliness assessment method as an advanced technique of electron beam melting method.
In this paper, oxide inclusions behavior in a cold crucible levitation melting of steel is discussed through fundamental experiments and numerical simulations in order to clarify the inclusions behavior during the fusion. Experiments showed a rapid removal of oxides from the bulk molten metal to the sample surface without remarkable change in shape and size distribution of contained oxides. Numerical analyses revealed the dominant factors of this phenomenon, and explained the reason why the size distribution of oxides does not change during the fusion.