On the Ladle Shroud Design and Mis-alignment Effects on the Fluid Flow in a Metallurgical Tundish- A CFD Model Study

¹ Leiyan Technology Corporation, 030024,Binxi industrial park Zone A no.5, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province P.R. China
² College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, 030024, Yingze West Street No. 79, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province P.R. China

^* Corresponding author: chenchao@tyut.edu.cn

Abstract

Two aspects of ladle shroud design in tundish are studied. The two strand tundish is a long and bare tundish i.e. without flow control devices but stopper rods to control flowrate. The 3D CAD geometry, turbulence models, discretisation of governing equations, numerical solution and post processing are performed in a commercial software Siemens STAR CCM+. Compared to the typical pipe ladle shroud, the velocity of impinging stream from the ladle shroud is lower for the trumpet ladle shroud. As a result, the flow stream in the whole tundish shows a contradictory tendency, i.e. the upward stream is more obvious than the downward stream for trumpet shroud and vice visa for pipe shrouds. In industrial production, the ladle shroud often canted to the front wall due to machinery reasons. Therefore, two cases that the misalignment degree of the ladle shroud are 5 and 10 degrees are studied. The results show that the impinging stream flow towards the front side of walls and the flow towards the outlets near the bottom wall and front wall. The horse like vortex that is typically observed in bare tundishes is destroyed. The non-symmetric flow pattern is formed for the severely biased cases which should be paid more attentions from industrial practice.