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Nathan Rhoades
April 22, 2006
Precipitation hardening (age hardening) is a heat treatment technique used to strengthening malleable materials such as aluminum and titanium. The idea is to create an impurity of fine particles within the material that impede the movement of dislocations. Dislocations are the major carrier of plasticity, or, the property of a material to undergo permanent deformation under a load. Precipitation hardening in effect reduces a materials plasticity.
permeability of the interior of the coil, N is the number of loops (or turns), l is the length of the solenoid.
Figure 2.1: FEMM simulations of loops of wire. The number of loops increase in number and in density from left to right. The rightmost illustration estimates infinitely dense windings. When this oscillating magnetic field intercepts a conductive object, it will induce a current in it. The direction and velocity of the induced current will oppose that of the current of the inducing coil (as to satisfy the conservation of energy). Figure 2.2a shows a cross-sectional FEMM simulation of a coil resting on top of a block of steel. The magnetic field exists vertically, and the current density is shown in color. Notice that the current density decreases exponentially as the distance from the surface of the steel 2 increases. This is known as the skin effect, and is defined as = . The skin
depth is related to the frequency, conductivity, and permeability of the material. A graph of the skin depth of a cylindrical bar of steel is shown in Figure 2.2b.
Figure 2.2: A) Current density of induced eddy currents in a block of steel. B) Skin depth of a cylindrical bar of steel at various frequencies.
Figure 3.1: Resistivity vs. temperature for various materials. (Notice how little NiCr wire changes with temperature; this is why it makes an ideal heating element.)
Figure 3.2: Change in specific heat with temperature for various materials.
3.3 Hysteresis
Magnetic materials, such as nickel, iron and steel, undergo what is referred to as hysteresis. As the magnetic field oscillates, it exerts work upon the magnetic domains within the material. The domains flip polarities and create friction which produces heat. The energy lost through hysteresis depends on the strength of the magnetism in the material and the area of the hysteresis loop. The hysteresis loop is a plot of the magnetic field versus the magnetic energy density for a material. An illustration of the flipping of magnetic domains is in Figure 3.3 below. Hysteresis is important for induction cooking as it is the dominant source of heating. The losses due to hysteresis are usually a secondary effect in most industrial applications because ohmic heating is dominant. High heating tends to eliminate this problem anyway; when the material heats up to its Curie temperature, it looses its magnetization and hysteresis losses do not occur.
the depth where 86% of heating occurs from eddy currents and resistivity. The reference depths decrease with frequency and increase with temperature as shown in Figure 3.4. Figure 3.5 shows the heat distribution and current distributions of a cylindrical work piece with diameter a.
4. Modeling
Induction heating is caused by high frequency oscillations of a magnetic field. The magnetic field is produced by a solenoid with an oscillating current passing through it. The most efficient type of oscillating signal is sinusoidal in nature, and therefore the driving current must also be sinusoidal. The system must also include an inductor (being the work coil) as a passive component of interest. For these reasons, resonant converters become the most practical implementation.
The series resonant converter has a low input impedance, meaning that all of the current ia through the work coil must be supplied by the source. The voltage across the reactive components is directly related to the quality factor Q, through the equation VC 0 = = Q . Therefore if (convolving to the time constant of an RL circuit) is very Va 2 small, then the voltage across the capacitor (or inductor) will be very large.
impedance, meaning that all of the voltage v a across the work coil must be supplied by the source. The current through the reactive components is directly related to the quality I factor Q, through the equation C = 0 RC = Q . Therefore if RC (convolving to the time Ia constant of an RC circuit) is very large, then the current through the capacitor (or inductor) will be very large.
5. My induction heater
I attempted to design and build an induction heater with the materials I had available to me. I used a standard 120VAC 60Hz source from a wall outlet which was fed into a 120VAC to 12VAC transformer. The transformer could only source up to 3A, so the output power was already limited. I chose to use a voltage-source series resonant converter as I was hoping to take advantage of the voltage (as it would be easier to step up the voltage by replacing the transformer in the future). The source was rectified using two capable diodes and a center tap, and this was feed into a small capacitor. I then used a function generator to drive a MOSFET, which in turn drove the base of a power BJT. The BJT was the only solid-state switch I could find for free. After a considerable number of trial configurations, I was able to get the system to switch at frequencies up to 100kHz. I designed a small work coil by wrapping magnetic wire in a tape dispenser cartridge, and I soldered the rest of the circuit together (Figure 5.2). The circuit successfully acted as a 120VAC/60Hz to 87VAC/45KHz converter (with an ugly ripple) but it was good enough for a proof of concept (Figure 5.3). It really didnt heat anything well because of the small amount of power it used. This was due to underrated components and the fact that I did not have enough money to spend on better ones. I plan to attempt to make a much more powerful induction heater in the future.
References: 1. Heat Treating, Vol 4, Metals Handbook, 9th ed., American Society for Metals, 1982 2. R.F. Haimbaugh, Induction Heat Treating, ASM International, 2006 3. Induction Heating Guide, Inductoheat Banyard (Pres.) 2003 4. J. Kassakian, M. Schlecht, G. Verghese, Principles of Power Electronics, AddisonWesley, 2001 5. http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils 6. http://www.richieburnett.co.uk Images: http://www.inductionheating.com/images/ph_front_coil.jpg http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils/laminations.png http://www.richieburnett.co.uk/indheat.html http://www.comsol.com/showroom/gallery/images/79.jpg http://www.brooks.af.mil/AFRL/HED/hedr/reports/handbook/362.jpg http://www.scopeboy.com/elec/induction/ih_schem.gif http://www.ckd.cz/img/novinky/n_24092005_01_02.gif http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/Images/Induction_Heater_Draft1.gif