Optimization of a Six-Strand Continuous Casting Tundish: Industrial Measurements and Numerical Investigation of the Tund
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uous steel casting (CSC) plants, together with the steelmaking furnace and secondary metallurgy units, provide a compact and efficient manufacturing process. Because of the growing demands for quality in metallurgical production, new engineering solutions are being developed to eliminate the current drawbacks of the continuous casting technology. The current state of this technology development allows the casting of liquid steel semifinished products with a shape and cross-sectional dimensions that is close to those of the finished products. The role of the tundish as an active metallurgical reactor has come to the forefront in this study. It is necessary to understand and describe the flow, transfer, and thermal phenomena that occur during the casting of steel. These studies involve numerous rectangular tundishes provided with two nozzles[1] being in use (from singleand multiple-strand through-type[2,3] or ‘‘delta’’-type units[4,5] to untypical ‘‘V’’-type,[6] ‘‘H’’-type,[7] and ‘‘L’’type units[8,9]). Among the research results reported in TOMASZ MERDER, Research Associate, is with the Department of Metallurgy, Silesian University of Technology, 40-019 Katowice, Poland. MAREK WARZECHA, Senior Research Associate, is with the Department of Metals Extraction and Recirculation, Czestochowa University of Technology, 42-200 Czestochowa, Poland. Contact e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript submitted December 28, 2010. Article published online April 12, 2012. 856—VOLUME 43B, AUGUST 2012
the literature, multistrand tundishes seldom occur. Most of the reported studies involve the flow of steel and separation of inclusions in single- or two-strand tundishes. However, the conditions of both the flow and nonmetallic inclusion separation are much more complex, especially taking into account the differences in the quality of the concasts in the individual strands of a CSC machine. Studies on multistrand tundishes are additionally valuable as such tundishes predominate in Poland’s metallurgical industry because of the production profile.[10–12] Tundishes are equipped with various types of flow controllers, such as dams, baffles, weirs,[13,14] turbulence inhibitors (e.g., ‘‘turbostop’’ plates),[3,15,16] or gas curtains.[17] A common practice in making modifications to the internal working space of a tundish is also to combine the different flow control devices.[13,15,18] Investigations have shown that if flow control devices are used, then the hydrodynamic conditions that occur in the tundish improve considerably; however, mounting a flow control device in an inappropriate location might impair these conditions. Research output in this field, as can be found in literature, is vast and methodologically diverse. The main currents of the presented studies concern physical[19,20] and numerical modeling of flow phenomena and refining processes.[4,6,16] Reports concerning the experimental tests carried out on commercial plants are available.[10,21,22] Studies that describe the efficiency of tundishes involved the use of macromixing characteristics called res
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