Chemical Homogenization Of Liquid Steel Flowed Through Continuous Casting Slab Tundish During Alloying Process

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the results of research on the behaviour of an alloy addition in steel flowing through the tundish used for casting slabs. The device under examination is a wedge-shaped single-nozzle tundish of a capacity of 30 Mg. Due to the complexity of alloy addition dissolution and dispersion in metallurgical processes, a decision was made to use the Species Model available within the Ansys-Fluent®program. For describing the turbulence, the Realizable k-ɛmodel was chosen. By defining the heat losses on respective planes making up the virtual model, the non-isothermal conditions existing during the flow of liquid steel through the tundish were considered. From the performed numerical simulations, the fields of steel flow and steel temperature and alloy addition concentration in the tundish working space were obtained. In order to accurately illustrate the process of chemical homogenization in the tundish working space, mixing curves were recorded. Based on the obtained results (mixing curves), the mixing time needed for achieving the 95% level of chemical homogenization was calculated.