MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION OF CLUSTERING OF ALUMINA PARTICLES IN TURBULENT LIQUID ALUMINUM

A Monte Carlo method was developed to simulate the formation of cluste rs of alumina particles suspended in a turbulent pure liquid aluminum melt. With this approach, the chaotic movements of small alumina parti cles suspended within eddies smaller than the Kolmogoroff microscale w ere treated in a similar way to Brownian motion, and clusters were ass umed to form once these particles collided with each other. The result s obtained from the simulation indicate that clusters form very quickl y during vigorous stirring and that the formation kinetics at the very beginning of mixing follow a second-order behavior. Clustering has be en observed previously in the SiC-Al system and was also observed in t he Al2O3-Al system in the present work.