Application of super gravity to separating non-metallic inclusions from 5052 aluminum alloy melt

Super-gravity segregation performed on self-designed centrifugal furnace is applied to separate non-metallic inclusions in molten aluminum under various gravity fields. The results show that the oxide inclusions are accumulated to the bottom of samples by super-gravity treatment. The level of inclusions aggregation became more remarkable with the increasing of super-gravity field. The settling rate of inclusions at the bottom of the sample is 0.35 after 5 minutes treatment under conventional gravity, while the settling rate of inclusions is 0.99 under super-gravity with G=250. According to the Stokes' law, the terminal velocity reaches at a very early stage of the process (when G=1, ν_r is 7.25×10^-5 m/s). However, when G=250 m/s, ν_r reaches 1.813×10^-2 m/s, which indicates the terminal velocity increases exponentially with adding gravity coefficient. Hence, the non-metallic inclusions can be separated effectively under super-gravity fields.