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Microwave heating and processing of solid metals using electromagnetic resonators

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Abstract

Heating plays a vital role in various manufacturing processes of metallic products. Microwave heating has many advantages over conventional conductive heating methods while it is currently limited to heating dielectric materials and powdered metals. This paper reports a new microwave heating method using electromagnetic resonators, which was, for the first time, proved effective for heating solid metals. This is a quite promising discovery, because as known, solid metals are essentially reflective of microwaves, and thus metallic objects are often prohibited in microwave ovens. In this paper, our experiment results showed almost complete microwave absorption and excellent heating performance for a range of metal plates including both magnetic (e.g., iron, nickel, and invar) and non-magnetic (e.g., tin and zinc). A patterned microwave heating process was also presented by adjusting electromagnetic resonators and microwave radiations. On this basis, a new multi-zone microwave processing paradigm was developed and demonstrated for welding metal plates. The research work may not only provide potential solutions for efficient heating and processing of complex-shaped metal parts, but also enable a plethora of applications like localized heating and thermal display.

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Funding

This project was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 51875288, 52105364, and 52090052), and supported by the XPLORER PRIZE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 210016, Nanjing, China

    Jing Zhou, Yingguang Li, Tao Yang, Wenzheng Xue & Xiaozhong Hao

  2. School of Engineering, University of Greenwich, Chatham Maritime, Kent, ME4 4TB, UK

    James Gao

Authors
  1. Jing Zhou
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  2. Yingguang Li
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  3. Tao Yang
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  4. Wenzheng Xue
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  5. Xiaozhong Hao
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Contributions

Jing Zhou: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing. Yingguang Li: conceptualization, supervision, project management. Tao Yang: investigation, validation, visualization, writing. Wenzheng Xue: investigation, validation, visualization, writing. Xiaozhong Hao: supervision, design of experiment. James Gao: supervision, research methodology, writing.

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Correspondence to Yingguang Li.

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Zhou, J., Li, Y., Yang, T. et al. Microwave heating and processing of solid metals using electromagnetic resonators. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 123, 1111–1121 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-10244-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-10244-w

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