SCALE MODEL EXPERIMENTS AND NUMERICAL STUDY

During the teeming process of molten steel from a ladle, a bathtub-type vortex may be formed in the ladle. The vortex entrains undesired slag on the surface into the tundish, lowering the quality. The formation of such vortices has been studied using two different scale models. Since the kinematic viscosity of water is similar to that of molten steel, the molten steel was simulated by water in the experiments. The Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique was used to measure water flow patterns. Results show that the initial tangential velocity of water is responsible for the vortex formation. The effects of Reynolds and Froude numbers on the vortex formation were investigated and Froude number was found to be the dominant pi-number. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling was also conducted to simulate the vortex formation with good agreement with th