Numerical Simulation Of Flow Field And Liquid Level Fluctuation In Continuous Casting Mold

Mold, as the most crucial part in the continuous casting machine and called the heart ofit, plays an important role in improving the quantity and quality of the steel. Flow pattern andsurface fluctuation of molten steel in the mold directly influence the continuous castingproduction and billet quality. Most of billet surface defects originate from the continuouscasting mold. At the same time, the billet quality increases with a higher casting speed. Butthe higher speed makes flow field and surface fluctuation of molten steel fluctuatingdrastically, which brings the new problem to billet quality for a continuously cast strand. So,it is obviously significant to analyses and study surface fluctuation and the flow field ofmolten steel in the mold of slab continuous caster.Flow field in the continuous casting mold is an extremely complicated physical-chemical process at high temperature, which is hard to measure directly. In the condition,using numerical simulation is a high effective approach to study the flow state and freesurface fluctuation.For a long time flow action of molten steel in the mold is simplified to steady state andmeniscus by interfacial tension is ignored because it is difficult to deal with the unsteadyinterface of free surface. The multiphase flow coupled with the standard k-? turbulencemodel is carried out to know flow field and surface action and then to provide a basis foroptimize cast process.Numerical simulation on flow field and free surface fluctuation of the mold with thebillet section is1280mm×180mm,which was done by commercial software FLUENT. It hasbeen proved that the different side-hole angle, immersed depth of the submerged entrynozzles and the casting speed have a remarkable influence on the flow field and free surfacefluctuation in the mold. The free surface keeps little period of fluctuation in the steadycasting process.