Reassessing tin circularity and criticality

Tin is an important metal for society with a high risk of supply disruptions. It is, therefore, classified as a critical material in many parts of the world. An exception is the European Union, for which tin was classified as a non-critical material in 2023. However, there are many discrepancies in the literature regarding the definitions and...

Towards neodymium recycling: Analysis of the availability and recyclability of European waste flows

The world is facing a growing neodymium demand, creating the need for developing a recycling system to handle future waste flows. Recycling technologies are emerging, but the recycling system around them can only be established with knowledge about available end-of-life (EoL) products. Therefore, this study quantified neodymium waste in European...

Numerical study of molten metal melt pool behaviour during conduction-mode laser spot melting

Molten metal melt pools are characterised by highly non-linear responses, which are very sensitive to imposed boundary conditions. Temporal and spatial variations in the energy flux distribution are often neglected in numerical simulations of melt pool behaviour. Additionally, thermo-physical properties of materials are commonly changed to...

Modeling of a continuous physical vapor deposition process: Mass transfer limitations by evaporation rate and sonic choking

In recent years, Physical Vapor Deposition has been advanced to a continuous process which makes it amenable for in-line, high-quality and energy-efficient galvanization. To achieve the high and uniform mass flow required for in-line production, a Vapor Distribution Box is used, in which the zinc is evaporated. The zinc fills the Vapor...

Effect of double-diffusive convection with cross gradients on heat and mass transfer in a cubical enclosure with adiabatic cylindrical obstacles

We investigate natural convection driven by a horizontal temperature gradient and a vertical concentration gradient in fluid-filled enclosures with obstructions inside it. Within the domain, nine adiabatic and impermeable cylinders are placed, occupying 30% of the domain volume. The Boussinesq approximation is used to account for density...

Assisting and opposing mixed convection with conjugate heat transfer in a differentially heated cavity filled with coarse-grained porous media

We report numerical simulations of assisting and opposing mixed convection in a side-heated, side-cooled cavity packed with relatively large solid spheres. The mixed convection is generated by imposing a movement on the isothermal vertical walls, either in or opposite to the direction of natural convection flow. For a fluid Prandtl number of...

Numerical analysis of natural convection in a differentially heated packed bed with non-uniform wall temperature

We report numerical simulations of natural convection and conjugate heat transfer in a differentially heated cubical cavity packed with relatively large hydrogel beads (d/L=0.2) in a Simple Cubic Packing configuration. We study the influence of a spatially non-uniform, sinusoidally varying, wall temperature on the local flow and heat transfer...

Numerical analysis of natural convection with conjugate heat transfer in coarse-grained porous media

We report numerical simulations of fluid natural convection with conjugate heat transfer in a bottom-heated, top-cooled cubical cavity packed with relatively large (d/L=0.2) solid spheres in a Body Centred Tetragonal (BCT) configuration. We study largely varying solid-to-fluid thermal conductivity ratios between 0.3 and 198, for a fluid...

The influence of surface deformation on thermocapillary flow instabilities in low Prandtl melting pools with surfactants

Heat and fluid flow in low Prandtl number melting pools during laser processing of materials are sensitive to the prescribed boundary conditions, and the responses are highly nonlinear. Previous studies have shown that fluid flow in melt pools with surfactants can be unstable at high Marangoni numbers. In numerical simulations of molten metal...

Marangoni driven turbulence in high energy surface melting processes

Experimental observations of high-energy surface melting processes, such as laser welding, have revealed unsteady, often violent, motion of the free surface of the melt pool. Surprisingly, no similar observations have been reported in numerical simulation studies of such flows. Moreover, the published simulation results fail to predict the...

Modeling of low-capillary number segmented flows in microchannels using OpenFOAM

Modeling of low-Capillary number segmented flows in microchannels is important for the design of microfluidic devices. We present numerical validations of microfluidic flow simulations using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method as implemented in OpenFOAM. Two benchmark cases were investigated to ensure the reliability of OpenFOAM in modeling complex...

Reaction-diffusion analysis for one-step plasma etching and bonding of microfluidic devices

A self-similar reaction front develops in reactive ion etching when the ions penetrate channels of shallow height h. This relates to the patterning of microchannels using a single-step etching and bonding, as described by Rhee et al. [Lab Chip 5, 102 (2005)] . Experimentally, we report that the front location scales as xf ? ht1/2 and the width...

Computational Simulations of Magnetic Particle Capture in Arterial Flows

The aim of Magnetic Drug Targeting (MDT) is to concentrate drugs, attached to magnetic particles, in a specific part of the human body by applying a magnetic field. Computational simulations are performed of blood flow and magnetic particle motion in a left coronary artery and a carotid artery, using the properties of presently available...

A stereo vision method for tracking particle flow on the weld pool surface

The oscillation of a weld pool surface makes the fluid flow motion quite complex. Two-dimensional results cannot reflect enough information to quantitatively describe the fluid flow in the weld pool; however, there are few direct three-dimensional results available. In this paper, we describe a three-dimensional reconstruction method to measure...

Numerical and Experimental Study of Electromagnetically Driven Vortical Flows

The paper reports on numerical and experimental investigations of electromagnetically driven vortical flows of an electrically conductive fluid in a generic setup. Two different configurations of permanent magnets are considered: a 3-magnet configuration in which the resulting Lorentz force is focused in the wall-boundary layers, and a 2-magnet...

Influence of rarefaction on the flow dynamics of a stationary supersonic hot-gas expansion

The gas dynamics of a stationary hot-gas jet supersonically expanding into a low pressure environment is studied through numerical simulations. A hybrid coupled continuum-molecular approach is used to model the flow field. Due to the low pressure and high thermodynamic gradients, continuum mechanics results are doubtful, while, because of its...

Subcritical flow past a circular cylinder surrounded by a porous layer

A study of the flow at subcritical Re = 3900 around a circular cylinder, surrounded at some fixed small distance by a porous layer with a hydraulic resistance typical for that of textile materials, has been performed by means of direct numerical simulations. The flow in the space between the porous layer and the solid cylinder was found to be...

Dynamics of droplet formation at T-shaped nozzles with elastic feed lines

We describe the formation of water in oil droplets, which are commonly used in lab-on-a-chip systems for sample generation and dosing, at microfluidic Tshaped nozzles from elastic feed lines. A narrow nozzle forms a barrier for a liquid–liquid interface, such that pressure can build up behind the nozzle up to a critical pressure. Above this...