Solidification Mechanism And Particle Size Prediction Of Cast Steel Shot Produced By Centrifugal Atomization

With the rapid development of modern industry, the demand for the metal abrasives has been growing day by day. The main application of the metal abrasives is the shot blast cleaning and strengthening and it has been widely used in the auto industry, the shipbuilding industry, the aircraft industry etc. Although the centrifugal atomization has its unique advantage in roundness and particle size distribution, the solidification mechanism of the cast steel shot produced by centrifugal atomization has not been clear for us. What’s more, most of the existed prediction formulas about the particle size are empirical formulas, and most of them are based on plane disk. Meanwhile, the atomized materials are usually aluminium, magnesium etc. The rotating speed has been up to tens of thousands.The solidification mechanism of the cast steel shot produced by centrifugal atomization with side-holes disk was studied systemically in this paper, it includes the break-up mechanism of the liquid, influence of different technological parameters (rotating speed, flow and degree of superheat) and the structure of the disk. Meanwhile, we use paraffin to simulate the process of centrifugal atomization to improve our understanding of the influence of different technological parameters and the structure of the disk. The results show that the average particle size will be smaller when the rotating speed is higher, the flow is smaller and the degree of superheat is bigger. On the other hand, the essentially impacts of the structure of the disk to the average particle size is the surface area of the walls of the side-holes. The bigger the surface area, the smaller the average particle size.At last, we established the theoretical model of the centrifugal atomization by the side-holes disk based on the former research. We also figured out the theoretical average particle size prediction formula in this particular disk. Furthermore, the coefficient of the model has been made so that the theoretical value will be closer to the experimental value.