TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimized Fluid Flow Control System for a Tundish Used in Frequent Steel Grade Change Operations
AU - Guarneros, Javier
AU - Morales, Rodolfo D.
AU - Gutierrez, Enif
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.
PY - 2023/6
Y1 - 2023/6
N2 - A slab caster with a wide casting mix carries high-frequency steel grade changes using a small, 14 ton capacity tundish and needs to decrease the intermixed steel tonnage. Testing different tundish arrangements, through a water one-third scale model, permits a flow control design to decrease the amount of mixed steel. A computer fluid dynamics approach, based on the Realizable k–ε model, replicates the experimental results. It helps to elucidate the role of the tundish filling rate, finding that increasing it increases the dissipation rate of kinetic energy coming out from the turbulence inhibitor. At high filling rates, the degraded kinetic energy of the downstream flow drives the residues of the “old” steel, prolonging the intermixing phenomena. In its later stages, the intermixing phenomena imply diffusion and transport on small scales, and both are governed by the Schmidt number given by the ratio of the Batchelor and Kolmogorov length scales, according to (Formula presented.). The Schmidt, Sc, numbers in steel are in the range of 28–440. These large Sc numbers mean that the diffusion process must reach the dissipative scales of turbulence, that is, beyond Kolmogorov´s scale, to achieve a complete mixing at microscale levels.
AB - A slab caster with a wide casting mix carries high-frequency steel grade changes using a small, 14 ton capacity tundish and needs to decrease the intermixed steel tonnage. Testing different tundish arrangements, through a water one-third scale model, permits a flow control design to decrease the amount of mixed steel. A computer fluid dynamics approach, based on the Realizable k–ε model, replicates the experimental results. It helps to elucidate the role of the tundish filling rate, finding that increasing it increases the dissipation rate of kinetic energy coming out from the turbulence inhibitor. At high filling rates, the degraded kinetic energy of the downstream flow drives the residues of the “old” steel, prolonging the intermixing phenomena. In its later stages, the intermixing phenomena imply diffusion and transport on small scales, and both are governed by the Schmidt number given by the ratio of the Batchelor and Kolmogorov length scales, according to (Formula presented.). The Schmidt, Sc, numbers in steel are in the range of 28–440. These large Sc numbers mean that the diffusion process must reach the dissipative scales of turbulence, that is, beyond Kolmogorov´s scale, to achieve a complete mixing at microscale levels.
KW - dissipations
KW - kinetic energy
KW - steel mixing
KW - tundish
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160930771&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/srin.202200809
DO - 10.1002/srin.202200809
M3 - Artículo
AN - SCOPUS:85160930771
SN - 1611-3683
VL - 94
JO - Steel Research International
JF - Steel Research International
IS - 6
M1 - 2200809
ER -