A Numerical Study of Transient Swirling Multiphase Flow of Molten Steel From a Ladle on a Teeming Process Available to Purchase

In the teeming process of molten steel from a ladle, a bathtub-type vortex may be formed in the ladle. The formation of such vortex will drag the slag from the top of the molten steel into the tundish which affects the cleanness of steel. In previous works water was considered to model the molten steel but we found that water is not a suitable fluid for simulation, so a dimensional analysis was applied to model the proper fluids for molten steel and slag with a composition in a real ladle. We deduced that freon or mercury can be relevant fluid models for simulating molten steel. In addition, the effects of Re, Fr and Bo number were studied and Fr and Re numbers were found to be dominant pi-numbers and the effect of interfacial tension and surface tension were ignored because of large Bo number. The selection of fluid models for slag were based on viscosity and due to fact that adding some materials like Cao-Ca F₂ for modifying slag decreases the viscosity of slag from 6.5 pa-s lower than 2 pa-s. The scale models was filled with freon and slag fluids were engine oil, fuel oil, water, DRAFSH46, DRAFSH100 and glycerol at the top of the freon. Furthermore, the cases were rotated at three different axis rotations. Results show that kinematic viscosity is responsible for slag entrainment into the drain rather than DENSITY for special Bo numbers. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling was also conducted to investigate the vortex formation under imposed conditions.