Preliminary Experiments While Designing a Cold Crucible for Metal Melting

This article deals with issues arising during the design and production of a cold crucible (CC) for melting metals and alloys using electromagnetic induction. The article deals particularly with the results from tests and numerical simulations for designing the CC. The heat fluxes from different metals and their alloys to two different CCs and one calorimeter were measured during the tests. The required magnetohydrodynamic effects on the melted load were verified, and related (independent) electrical and thermal quantities were measured. The dependent electric parameters (R, L, Z) were measured on the inductor and on the primary side of the high frequency transformer. The experiments were numerically simulated first, and the experimental and simulated results were then compared. The final part of the article contains the final design of the CC. The final CC was tested for the transfer of energy from the inductor into a load placed inside the CC and the required magnetohydrodynamic effects on the melted load inside the CC were partly verified too.