Uphill Teeming Utilizing TurboSwirl to Control Flow Pattern in Mold

Abstract

AbstractThe flow pattern has widely been recognized to have an impact on the exogenous non‐metallic inclusion generation in the gating system and mold flux entrapment in the mold in the uphill teeming process. The possible solutions of the flow pattern control are required to be reliable and practical in order to improve the yield and the ingot quality in the steel production. In this work, a mathematical model of a new novel swirling flow generation component, TurboSwirl, was studied to investigate the flow pattern of steel in the gating system and molds based on the authors' previous study. The same calculation method and boundary conditions were adopted. The results show that a much calmer initial filling condition with less fluctuations is achieved in the mold with a swirling flow by using the TurboSwirl compared to previous studies. In addition, the initial position of the mold powder bags can further be lowered in the mold due to a decreased hump height. Moreover, the difference between the hump height and the surface height in the present model has a maximum value of 83 mm, which gives a lower risk of mold flux entrapment. Furthermore, the maximum wall shear stress value can generally be lowered with less fluctuations after the first hump formation in the mold at 2.5 s from the teeming start. In conclusion, the initial filling conditions can be substantially improved by the use of TurboSwirl flow pattern control.