Theoretical and Experimental Study on Suspended Circular Disk Motion in Centrifugal Casting Device

Functionally Graded Materials are high performance composite materials, in which physical and/or chemical properties of these material structures are graded in the several directions. Centrifugal solid-particle method is one of the effective fabrication methods by use of centrifugal casting devices. The casting mold that includes reinforcement particle and molten metal are centrifuged and particles move in the mixture due to density differences of these materials. However, there is no information on the particle motions. The aim of the present study is to disclose on suspension particle motion in the axially rotating drum. The particle velocity of the circular disk is measured by PTV (Particle Tracking Velocimetry) method and is theoretically predicted by BBO (Basset-Boussinesq-Ossen) equation. It is found that (1) each particle motion is affected by the rotating speed, (2) the measured velocity is compared with theoretical result, and (3) when the particle moves in the Stokes’ regime, its velocity is linearly increased with the distance from the center of the drum and this trend is intensified with an increase in the rotating speed.