Physical and Mathematical Modeling of Two-Phase Flows in a HOLLOW JET NOZZLE

Abstract

The HOLLOW JET NOZZLE (HJN) is a heat exchanger used for the removal of superheat from molten steel between tundish and mold. It is a relatively new technology, developed by CRM, Belgium, through engineering the design of the conventional submerged entry nozzle (SEN) in continuous casting. In the present study, fluid-flow phenomena in a HJN system were investigated experimentally via a 0.23-scale water model, designed and operated on the basis of a Froude scaling criterion. Parallel to such, numerical simulation was carried out via FLUENT 6.1 embodying a turbulent, VOF-based, multiphase flow calculation procedure. These, in general, indicated that the incoming liquid, following its impingement on the solid baffle, spreads radially and flows down as a thin liquid film along the wall of the HJN. A large number of experiments were carried out to determine the radial spread of the impinging water jet and its point of attachment on the wall of the HJN as a function of volumetric flow rate, baffle geometry and dimensions, diameter of HJN, etc. These indicated that baffle geometry and dimensions together with the diameter of the HJN influence the point of attachment (or the corresponding “attachment distance”) most. It was demonstrated that attachment distance and the associated contact area between the flowing liquid and HJN wall can be considerably improved by appropriately modifying the currently employed baffle design. Such experimental findings were corroborated well by the FLUENT-based numerical procedure, which was in general able to capture the intricacies of film flow in the HJN system reasonably accurately. In addition to these, simplified models for attachment distance and film thickness have been developed and proposed for axisymmetrical HJN operation. Based on such, a relatively simple differential heat flow model has been developed for prediction of melt temperature in an industrial HJN system. It is demonstrated that in the absence of any elaborate numerical computation, the simplified models developed in this study provide a reasonable basis for engineering calculations in the axisymmetrical HJN system.