Study on process of dual-frequency electromagnetic confinement and shaping for stainless steel

Electromagnetic confinement and shaping (EMCS) is an advanced materials processing technique. In this paper, a novel dual-frequency EMCS was proposed, i.e. lower frequency magnetic field (20 kHz) was used to produce the electromagnetic force, and higher frequency magnetic field (50 kHz) to heat and melt metal materials without effect on the electromagnetic force. Shaping inductors and heating inductors were designed according to the experimental results and our previous works, and distance between them was experimentally determined. Stability of dual-frequency EMCS of melt was detailedly analyzed. At last, several stainless steel samples were produced by the new method, and results show that it can easily achieve good coupling of temperature field and electromagnetic force by separately designing and controlling the two magnetic fields. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.