A number of researchers have reported that a static magnetic field (SMF) will affect the process of selective laser melting (SLM), which is achieved mainly through affecting molten pool evolution and microstructure growth. However, its underlying mechanism has not been fully understood. In this work, we conducted a comprehensive investigation of the influence of SMF on the SLM Inconel 625 superalloy through experiments and multi-scale numerical simulation. The multi-scale numerical models of the SLM process include the molten pool and the dendrite in the mushy zone. For the molten pool simulation, the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results regarding the pool size. Under the influence of the Lorentz force, the dimension of the molten pool, the flow field, and the temperature field do not have an obvious change. For the dendrite simulation, the dendrite size obtained in the experiment is employed for setting up the dendrite geometry in the dendrite numerical simulation, and our findings show that the applied magnetic field mainly influences the dendrite growth owing to thermoelectric magnetic force (TEMF) on the solid–liquid interface rather than the Lorentz force inside the molten pool. Since the TEMF on the solid–liquid interface is affected by the interaction between the SMF and thermal gradient at different locations, we changed the SLM parameters and SMF to investigate the effect on the TEMF. The simulation shows that the thermoelectric current is highest at the solid–liquid interface, resulting in a maximum TEMF at the solid–liquid interface and, as a result, affecting the dendrite morphology and promoting the columnar to equiaxed transition (CET), which is also shown in the experiment results under 0.1 T. Furthermore, it is known that the thermoelectric magnetic convection (TEMC) around the dendrite can homogenize the laves phase distribution. This agrees well with the experimental results, which show reduced Nb precipitation from 8.65% to 4.34% under the SMF of 0.1 T. The present work can provide potential guidance for microstructure control in the SLM process using an external SMF.

A solar chimney is a typical device to harness naturally available energy resources to power ventilation inside buildings. A comparative computational fluid dynamics study of the flow and thermal mechanics inside solar chimneys is performed in this study. We utilize a variational multiscale formulation to model the combined turbulent/laminar flow regimes presented in the natural ventilation problem in the sense of large eddy simulation. Nitsche type weak enforcement of Dirichlet boundary conditions is integrated into the numerical framework to address the excessive mesh resolution requirement in flow and thermal boundary layers. Numerical methodology is verified and validated against experimental data in a model room with a solar chimney, and good agreement between the present results and the reference data is obtained. Finally, the thermofluid characteristics are investigated in a building equipped with different solar chimney designs. Particular emphases are placed on the effects of attached building spaces to the flows within the chimneys. The results indicated that the complex and realistic building space in this paper reduces the turbulence entering the solar chimney inlet and, thus, increases the air flow rate by up to 48.9% compared with the frequently used standalone chimney simulation paradigm. In addition, the thermal comfort indices are presented. With increased air flow rate in the chimney, the overall thermal comfort in the building is likely to be decreased, suggesting the necessity in the future studies to consider thermal comfort as an optimization objective.

We enable the creation of model ecosystems constructed as physical networks of organisms by accelerating diffusion.