Prof. Wuliang Yin
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
The University of Manchester
E-mail :Wuliang.yin@manchester.ac.uk
Wuliang was a professor at Tianjin University (China) from 2007 to 2012; He then became a Mettler Toledo (MT) lecturer with the Department of EEE at Manchester University, U.K., in 2012, promoted to a Reader in Electromagnetic Sensors and Instrumentation in 2020.
He is one of the pioneers in magnetic induction tomography and led the development of the first digital magnetic induction tomography system. He discovered and established rigorous science underpinning the link between steel microstructure and its electromagnetic properties and developed a novel instrument for monitoring key quality parameters in steel hot rolling processes. His work in I&M has impacted several industrial fields: his microstructure monitoring technology was patented, trademarked as EMspec® and commercialized by Primetals Technologies with installations in the UK and EU. A high speed portable multi-channel EM scanner was trademarked as Accuspect® and commercialised by TrainFX (UK). His work on non-contact rail inspection using EM sensing array has contributed to the safety of the UK Rail Network with many kilometers of track being inspected using this technology annually. He contributed to the development of MT’s next generation metal detectors, enabling smaller metallic contaminates to be detected in food products and improving consumer safety.
He has authored one book, >20 patents, >350 scientific articles featuring on the front cover of Nano Energy, Advanced Intelligent Systems and IEEE Trans Magnetics.
His work has been recognized by multiple awards: Williams Awards from The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in 2014 and 2015; an IEEE Gold Medal as the most productive reviewer for IEEE Tran I& M in the UK in 2020; the Best Application Award from IEEE I&M Society in 2021, and IEEE I&M Society Graduate Fellowship awards as supervisor in 2018 and 2022. He is leading and involved in many projects supported by The Royal Society (London), The IEEE, EPSRC (UK), NSF and industrial sponsors: Siemens, Rolls-Royce, Tata Steel, Liberty Steel Group and MT, etc.
Title: Applications of Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT): imaging molten steel flow and copper slag solidification processes
Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) or Electromagnetic Tomography (EMT) is an imaging modality for industrial process monitoring and biomedical imaging. It has been intensively studied and developed due to its non-contact, portable and low-cost features. This talk will briefly introduce the measurement principle of the MIT and then focus on two applications.
The first application involves the imaging of copper slag solidification processes. The design of a sensor that can work in the harsh temperature environments is described. Measurement trials conducted on a molten converter slag solidification process where the copper slag changes from molten state to solidification state during the cool-down for more than an hour is then presented. The phenomenon when the disorderly distributed metal gradually forms solid and permeable object was observed, which can indicate the status of the process. This is the first report of observing such a process by using an EMT system. Moreover location-based convergence analysis has been carried out in the imaging space and useful new insights have been gained for the copper production process, which would be difficult to obtain otherwise. Verification and calibration using XRD and SEM indicate the viability of the measurement method based on EMT.
The second application covers determining two-phase flow characteristics in the submerged entry nozzle and in the mold of a continuous casting model with combined electromagnetic tomography. It describes experiments on the combined determination of the distribution of liquid metal and argon in the submerged entry nozzle (SEN) and of the flow in the mold of a small-scale physical model of a continuous slab caster. Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) is applied for visualizing the metal distribution in the SEN, while the flow in the mold is determined by contactless inductive flow tomography (CIFT). Depending on the gas flow rate, various flow regimes are identified, among them pressure and mold level oscillations, transitions between double and single vortex flows, and transient single port ejections.