Single Mode Microwave Heating of Copper Powder Metal Compacts
J. Ma, C.T. Smith, G.J. Weisel, B.L. Weiss, N.M. Miskovsky, and D.T. Zimmerman.
The Pennsylvania State University.
We present numerical simulations that complement our experimental results of the microwave heating of copper powder metal compacts in separate electric (E) and magnetic (H) fields of a TE102 cavity.
In general, thermal dissipation in the compacts may be attributed to resistive heating, dielectric losses, and magnetic losses. These dissipative mechanisms are coupled to the fields by the effective conductivity, effective complex permittivity, and effective complex permeability of the compacts, respectively.
We model the fields of the cavity and the heating trends of the compacts by incorporating the separate losses into COMSOL using independently measured values of the electromagnetic parameters. The simulation results show good agreement with experimental ones and help to provide a self-consistent picture of the interaction of microwave fields with powdered metals.