Solution of three-dimensional temperature and turbulent velocity field in continuously cast steel billets with electromagnetic stirring by a meshless method

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the development of meshless Local Radial Basis Function Collocation Method (LRBFCM) for solution of three dimensional (3D) turbulent molten steel flow and solidification under the influence of electromagnetic stirring (EMS) and its application to continuous casting process of steel billets. A mixture continuum approach is used to formulate the coupled set of macroscopic equations for mass, momentum, energy, turbulent kinetic energy, and dissipation rate in Cartesian coordinates. The mushy zone is treated as a Darcy porous media. The explicit Chorin fractional step method is used to resolve the pressure-velocity coupling. The LRBFCM uses explicit time discretization and spatial discretization with shape-adaptive multiquadrics radial basis functions collocation on non-uniform seven-noded influence domains, and displacement-adaptive upwind scheme. The Lorentz force due to EMS is provided by a one-way coupling by Elmer software. The advantages of the meshless method are trivial adaptation of the nodal densities, simple upgrade to 3D from previous two-dimensional models, and high accuracy. A study on the influence of changing the EMS parameters on the calculated temperature and velocity fields is performed. The paper confirms the ability of LRBFCM meshless solution of a realistic 3D multiphysics industrial problem with complicated swirling flow pattern.