Abstract
The formation of final billet quality in the Direct-Chill (DC) casting of aluminum alloy can usually be a function of flow characteristics in the bulk liquid/slurry and the mushy zone. The present work has numerically studied the effect of the Rayleigh number (Ra) and the billet casting diameter on the flow pattern under the influence of thermal convection in the DC casting. The turbulence effect was approximated using the low Reynolds number Velocity Variance-Elliptic relaxation (Re v2-f) turbulence model. In the numerical scheme, the second-order upwind differencing scheme was used to discretize the combined diffusion/convection coefficients and the fully implicit scheme was employed to discretize the transient term. The solutions of the model equations were implemented in ANSYS FLUENT utilizing some user-defined function codes specifically written for the present work. The results obtained show that there is an absence of recirculating vortex for lower Ra which led to deeper sump depth. Also, an increase in the casting billet diameter deepens the flow penetration, weakens the recirculating vortex and deepens the sump depth.
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