Characterization of the Blast Furnace Burden Surface: Experimental Measurement and Roughness Statistics

Abstract

This paper is the first of a series of papers on the roughness characteristics of the burden surface in the blast furnace. The measurement method of the burden surface roughness texture is described, and the overall roughness characteristics of the burden surface are studied from a statistical point of view. This study focuses on two typical granularized burden materials, coke and sintered ore, which present four kinds of burden particles under two individual particle sizes. Simulated cold-state burden belts proportional to the practical burden radial sectors were stacked in a pilot plant. An RGBD camera was used to measure the simulated burden belt surfaces to obtain the surface texture details. Four corresponding digital elevation models of the burden belts were obtained through data processing. The root mean squared height, skewness, kurtosis, and spatial autocorrelation function are selected as statistical indexes. The obtained digital elevation models were counted. The results show that all four kinds of burden surfaces are Isotropic-Rough-Surface. In addition, the height distributions of the rough burden surface are close to the Gaussian distribution. Also, the spatial autocorrelation functions of the coke and large-sized sintered ore burden surfaces are close to the Gaussian function form. And lastly, the spatial autocorrelation function of the small sintered ore burden surface is close to the exponential function form.