Turbulent and transitory flows through sen ports and it's effects on the integral flow patterns inside the slab mold

The purpose of this paper is to study the turbulent structure that developed in fluid flow through the ports of the SEN, to achieve the aim a full scale water model was used which include three SEN design to study the flow pattern caused by each SEN design. Particle Image Velocimetry techniques, tracer injection, bath levels measurements through ultrasonic sensor and ultrasonic velocimetry are applied to follow the turbulence phenomenon. The goals and objectives of the present work include the study of the nature of transient flows through the ports including transitory velocity fields, average and levels measurements to observe the effects of the port geometry on the flow pattern inside the mold. It was found that geometry of the ports plays an important role in the generation of turbulence, which is the main cause of the most usual quality defects. The SEN with rectangular ports develops high turbulence but decrease the backflow phenomenon, the SEN with square ports improve the flow patterns and decrease the turbulence level even if develops some vortex flows but are small in size and intensity respect to the previous case, and finally the SEN with circular ports seems to be the best design, however have the most poor port utilization and the yields high meniscus speed which can lead backflow problems.