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Pavel Ramirez Lopez

pavel.ramirez.lopez@swerim.se +46 (0)70 368 74 88

Flow Optimization for Steel Cleanliness During Continuous Casting

Swerim carried out a holistic investigation on fluid flow in casting molds through the combination of numerical modeling, water modeling, liquid metal modeling, and plant trials to improve steel cleanliness.

Steel cleanliness is an everlasting issue for steelmakers due to the escalating demands for high-quality steel in diverse markets. Swerim has constructed diverse tools to characterize fluid flows in Continuous Casting molds including a full-scale water and liquid metal models as well as advanced CFD models. The integration of these unique tools allows steelmakers to diagnose their flow conditions, which is challenging to be implemented in real casters due to the adverse operating conditions.

The strong advantage of running full-scale analogous systems provides steelmakers the most similar operating conditions as their real system. Especially, the unique full-scale liquid metal model overcomes well-known limitations of water models by the huge differences in material properties. Furthermore, the cutting-edge CFD model developed successfully in Swerim features transparent access to the realistic flow behavior in the mold such as flow pattern, stability of mold level (i.e., slag-metal interface), argon behavior in the mold, etc.

This unique capacity of running the full-scale experimental and advanced numerical tools at Swerim offers steelmakers to test their operating conditions and devices from diverse perspectives. An example of this is a series of results for SSAB within the OPT4CAST project where operating windows to improve steel cleanliness are suggested through the integration of these tools.

Figure. (a) Full-scale water model, (b) Full-scale liquid metal model, and (c) Full 3D numerical model for a continuous caster simulating slag-metal interface with argon bubbles

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