Flow Interaction in Continuous Casting Tundish Due to Bubble Curtain Operation

Abstract

Tundish argon bubbling has been studied in literature regarding homogenization and non‐metallic inclusion removal. Argon bubbling not only alters the flow within the tundish, which might aid the natural flotation of inclusions, argon bubbles also can directly capture inclusions, when bubbles and inclusions collide. The ascending bubbles from the line sparger induce a recirculating flow within the tundish. This recirculating flow interacts with the incoming liquid jet, emanating from the ladle shroud. For a sufficiently strong recirculating flow, the incoming liquid jet is deflected in a similar manner as a jet in cross‐flow. For this paper, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been carried out with OpenFOAM to reproduce experiments, studying the jet deflection in a 1:3 water model due to gas bubbling. In the course of the CFD simulations, several modeling approaches are tested. A significantly large jet deflection might adversely affect the internal flow patterns of the tundish, as the liquid jet might hit a present turbulence inhibitor off‐center or miss it entirely. Tundish jet deflection constitutes an adverse effect of gas bubbling in a tundish leading to an off‐design, internal flow, which has not been studied so far, to the best of the authors’ knowledge.