The objective of this work was to model a transferred arc metal evaporator including the behavior of a plasma arc and the molten anode being continuously evaporated. The model predicted the system temperature and velocity distributions as well as the rate of metal evaporation. The effects of arc current, arc length, plasma gas flow rate, crucible temperature, surrounding temperature, and hydrogen addition to an argon arc have been investigated and some optimization of operating conditions was done. / The appropriate governing equations were solved numerically. The numerical results of the present investigation revealed that the geometry of the crucible did not significantly affect the temperature distribution of anode surface or the metal vaporization rate. Increasing plasma torch flow rate also did not lead to an increase of the temperature of the anode surface and the metal vaporization rate. However, the crucible temperatures significantly affected the vaporization rate; the crucible should be maintained at a high temperature, which is compatible to the physico-chemical properties of the crucible material. The arc current strongly affected the vaporization. Addition of hydrogen to the plasma gas caused a significant increase of vaporization rate. The arc length greatly affected the surface temperature distribution, the metal vaporization rate, the arc voltage, and the total power. Shorter arcs were found to be more effective. The modeling results were in reasonable agreement with the experiment results.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.32738 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Yu, Jun, 1965- |
| Contributors | Munz, R. J. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Engineering (Department of Chemical Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001810786, proquestno: MQ70561, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds