• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.314-322
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• 2018

AlSi12 is a heat-resistant aluminum alloy that is lightweight, corrosion-resistant, machinable and attracting attention as a functional material in aerospace and automotive industries. For that reason, AlSi12 powder has been used for high performance parts through 3D printing technology. The purpose of this study is to observe deposition characteristics of AlSi12 powder in a direct energy deposition (DED) process (one of the metal 3D printing technologies). In this study, deposition characteristics were investigated according to various process parameters such as laser power, powder feed rate, scan speed, and slicing layer thickness. In the single track deposition experiment, an irregular bead shape and balling or humping of molten metal were formed below a laser power of 1,000 W, and the good-shaped bead was obtained at 1.0 g/min powder feed rate. Similar results were observed in multi-layer deposition. Observation of deposited height after multi-layer deposition revealed that over-deposition occurred at all conditions. To prevent over-deposition, slicing layer thickness was experimentally determined at given conditions. From these results, this study presented practical conditions for good surface quality and accurate geometry of deposits.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.752-762
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• 2021

The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics is one of the most widely used mesh-free numerical method for thermo-fluid dynamics. Due to its Lagrangian nature and simplicity, it is recently gaining popularity in simulating complex physics with large deformations. In this study, the 3D single/two-phase numerical simulations are performed on the Liquid Metal Reactor (LMR) centralized sloshing benchmark experiment using the SPH parallelized using a GPU. In order to capture multi-phase flows with a large density ratio more effectively, the original SPH density and continuity equations are re-formulated in terms of the normalized-density. Based upon this approach, maximum sloshing height and arrival time in various experimental cases are calculated by using both single-phase and multi-phase SPH framework and the results are compared with the benchmark results. Overall, the results of SPH simulations show excellent agreement with all the benchmark experiments both in qualitative and quantitative manners. According to the sensitivity study of the particle-size, the prediction accuracy is gradually increasing with decreasing the particle-size leading to a higher resolution. In addition, it is found that the multi-phase SPH model considering both liquid and air provides a better prediction on the experimental results and the reality.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.187-194
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• 2017

Selective laser melting (SLM) can produce a layer of a metal powder and then fabricate a three-dimensional structure by a layer-by-layer method. Each layer consists of several lines of molten metal. Laser parameters and thermal properties of the materials affect the geometric characteristics of the melt pool such as its height, depth, and width. The geometrical characteristics of the melt pool are determined herein by optical microscopy and three-dimensional bulk structures are fabricated to investigate the relationship between them. Powders of the commercially available Fe-based tool steel AISI H13 and Ni-based superalloy Inconel 738LC are used to investigate the effect of material properties. Only the scan speed is controlled to change the laser parameters. The laser power and hatch space are maintained throughout the study. Laser of a higher energy density is seen to melt a wider and deeper range of powder and substrate; however, it does not correspond with the most highly densified three-dimensional structure. H13 shows the highest density at a laser scan speed of 200 mm/s whereas Inconel 738LC shows the highest density at 600 mm/s.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.198-201
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• 2001

Porous structures of aluminum foam have been studied by using return aluminum scrap. The apparent foam shape, foam height, density, pore size and their distributions in various section areas of the experimental samples have been investigated. The sample have been cast into metallic mold, using aluminum foam prepared from a precursor based on pure Al ingot and return aluminum scrap mixed with various amounts of 1-2wt% increasing viscosity and foam agent materials. The process provides for flexibility in design of foam structures via relatively easy control over the amount of hydrogen evolution and the drainage processes which occur during foam formation. This is facilitated by manipulating parameters such as the foaming agent, thermal histories during solidification and mix melt viscosities. A metal for producing the foamed are decomposing a foaming agent in a molten metal such that there is an initial and a subsequent expansion due to foaming agent. It has been found that the Al porous foaming with variation amount of 1∼2wt% foam agent and at 2min holding time, which melting temperature has appeared homogeneous pore size at 650∼700$^{\circ}C$. The compression strength were 10-13 kg/min at 125ppi, and increased by higher pore density. The acoustical performance of the panel made with the foamed aluminum is considerably improved; its absorption coefficient shows NRC 0.6-0.8. It has been found that the Al foam is very preferable for the compactness of the thermal system.