2004 Volume 44 Issue 8 Pages 1334-1341
A summary of computational work reported in the literature on tundish hydrodynamics has been presented wherein, it is shown that a diverse range of both computational (e.g., nodal configurations, boundary conditions, inlet turbulence etc.) and physical parameters (e.g., size, number of strands, inlet mass flow rates etc.) were applied. Accordingly, the conclusions drawn were found to vary from one study to another. In the present work, an attempt has therefore been made to assess computationally the role of various mathematical model parameters. To this end, mathematical model results were validated against experimental measurements on Residence Time Distribution (RTD) parameters derived from water model tundish.
Experimental measurements of RTD were carried out continuously by monitoring conductivity of water at the tundish exit port on a digital computer using a DAS interface. On the other hand, numerical calculations were carried out via the commercial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software FLUENT, 6.0. The combined experimental and computational study indicated that a sufficiently small grid resolution (control volume of the order of 10−6 m3) is necessary to arrive at a practical grid independent solution. Furthermore, Reynolds stress model was found to simulate RTD in the system somewhat superior to the standard coefficient k-ε model. Through comparison of the predicted results with experimental measurements, a set of optimal mathematical model configurations was deduced. It was demonstrated that mathematical model configured in this work is sufficiently reliable and robust as this leads to estimates of RTD parameters (e.g., tmin, tmax, tmean) close to experimental measurements in a tundish with and without flow modifiers.
