Argon Bubble Coalescence and Breakup in a Steel Ladle with Bottom Plugs

Abstract

Gas‐stirred ladles are widely used in the steel secondary refining process. In order to produce high‐quality steel, a range of stirring conditions, from hard stirring for mixing to gentle stirring for inclusion removal, is required. In this paper, a full scale unsteady three‐dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to simulate the bubble behavior in a steel ladle. A volume of fluid (VOF)‐Lagrangian approach is applied to simulate multiphase flow characteristics. The VOF method is used to track the liquid steel and slag, while the Lagrangian method is used to track the movement of argon bubbles. A water model is used to validate the gas‐stirred ladle model against experimental data. Flow field and bubble breakup and coalescence phenomena inside the ladle is studied in the baseline case, and the effects of initial bubble diameter and gas flow rate during the stirring process have been investigated through parametric study as well.

Numerical and Physical Study on New Simple Design of Subflux Flow Controller for One-Strand Tundish

“…The transport of non-metallic inclusions was coupled with the forces of buoyancy, drag, lift, virtual mass force and pressure. The DPM model was clearly described in detail in [ 45 , 46 , 47 ]. Non-metallic inclusions could flow out of the tundish through a tundish nozzle with molten steel into the mold, or be removed from the steel after contacting a free surface.…”

Numerical Simulation of Electric Arc Heating Process in the Refining Ladle

“…During the process, bubble may coalesce and breakup depends on local turbulence flow. [6] The drag force also changes due to bubble diameter difference. DPM model is employed to simulation of the bubble behavior and its interaction with continuum phase.…”

“…The hydrodynamics of ladles has been studied by many researchers, [2][3][4][5][6][7][8] with different approaches for simulation. Three typical methods are used to study the hydrodynamic behaviors: volume of fluid (VOF) for continuous multiphase modeling with discrete phase model (DPM) for gas bubbles, Eulerian for both multiphase modeling and bubbles, and Eulerian for multiphase with the population balance model (PBM) for bubbles.…”

Physical and Numerical Simulation of the Optimum Nozzle Radial Position in Ladles with One Nozzle and Bottom Gas Injection

“…A large number of numerical models 5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] have been developed to predict the slag eye area, however only the two previous references 5,7) have partially investigated the effect of the nozzle position on the slag eye. Han et al 11) reported the first investigation using CFD and a water model, confirming that increasing slag thickness and gas flow rate increases both mixing time and the slag eye area.…”

“…11) Liu et al 8) reported the ladle eye area for central gas injection using open foam. Liu et al 9) suggest that the initial bubble size does not affect the slag eye, however Li and Zhang 19) indicate that the bubble size distribution affects the slag eye area at high gas flow rates. Liu et al 10) reported a change from circular to oval slag eye by increasing the gas flow rate.…”