Annals of the Assembly for International Heat Transfer Conference 13

ISBN 1-56700-225-0 / CD 1-56700-226-9

Year 2006

Dusan P. Sekulic
Department of Mechanical Engineering and University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing, College of Engineering, Lexington, KY 40506, USA

Abraham J. Salazar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA

M. Omar
University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA

Hui Zhao
Department of Mechanical Engineering and University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing, College of Engineering, Lexington, KY 40506, USA

Advanced materials processing requires tight thermal conditions for accomplishing high quality outcomes. These conditions can be achieved by using a diverse set of heating/cooling techniques. For example, CAB aluminium brazing of compact heat exchangers or soldering operations in electronics industry may require significant energy resources for mass production and often must be executed at inherently very low energy utilization efficiency. Such tasks have usually been accomplished by spatially non-distributed radiation and/or convection.
In this paper, an experimental study of an innovative application of microwave heating for metal joining is presented. Process heating (say, of a copper substrate and solder pre-forms, or copper-solder-copper sandwich structures) was accomplished in a microwave field (a multimodal 2.45 GHz field, 2−5 kW under atmospheric conditions). Heating is facilitated in a spatially distributed manner using a Si susceptor imbedded in an alumina matrix/substrate. Various arrangements of conducting metallic materials, semi-conducting susceptor sources, and ceramic matrices were investigated. Temperature distributions were monitored in real time, using IR digital imaging. Processing cycles were registered in situ (i.e., the joining process has been monitored in real time within the cavity during actual heating/soldering). A CFD study of the same physical configuration has been performed as well.
Experimental data and subsequent analysis indicate feasibility of the use of a microwave field for distributed heating, in particular for metal joining processes.

MPR-10 pages DOI: 10.1615/IHTC13.p11.100 Download article

Article price - $35.00

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