Simulation of continuous casting of steel by a meshless technique

Abstract

A recently developed local radial basis function collocation method is used for the solution of the transient convective–diffusive heat transport in continuous casting of steel. The solution of the thermal field with moving boundaries due to phase-change and the growing computational domain is based on the mixture continuum formulation. The growth of the domain and the movement of the starting block are described by activation of additional nodes and by the movement of the boundary nodes through the computational domain, respectively. Time-stepping is performed in an explicit way by a simple characteristic procedure. A two-dimensional transient test case solution is shown at different times and its accuracy is verified by comparison with the reference finite volume method results. The method is very attractive in the present context due to its trivial implementation of curved geometry for two and three dimensions, accuracy and stability of the results.