Turbulent flow and heat transfer coupled with solidification in slab continuous casting mold was studied by numerical simulation method. Volume of fluid （VOF） model is used to solve steel-air two-phase flow problem and enthalpy-porosity scheme is introduced to solve the fluid flow problem involving solidification. Contributions of various nozzle port angles and port widths and heights on the free surface fluctuation and the thickness of solidifying shell in slab mold were particularly investigated, based on which the structure of submerged entry nozzle was optimized. Flow inside the common nozzle port cannot fill the entire outlet area, having a recirculation in the upper portion of the port, which is enlarged for the nozzle port with both larger height and width. Results show that the flow in mold cavity is mainly controlled by the nozzle port angle. The increase of the angle of upper face of the port to shape a roughly streamlined inner-wall improves the effective area fraction of the nozzle, resulting in less jet impingement, weaker free surface turbulence and thicker solidifying steel shell.
The key to reduce shell breakout in the continuous casting process is to control shell thickness in the mold. A numerical simulation on the turbulent flow and heat transfer coupled with solidification in the slab mold using the volume of fluid （VOF） model and the enthalpy-porosity scheme was conducted and the emphasis was put upon the flow effect on the shell thickness profiles in longitudinal and transverse directions. The results show that the jet acts a stronger impingement on the shell of narrow face, which causes a zero-increase of shell thickness in a certain range near the impingement point. The thinnest shell on the slab cross-section locates primarily in the center of the narrow face, and secondly near the comer of the wide face. Nozzle optimization can obviously increase the shell thickness and make it more uniform.
The temperature of gas flow inside a blast furnace （BF） changes significantly when the blast furnace is under unstable operations, and the temperature and stress distributions of cooling staves （CS） for BF work the same pattern. The effect of gas temperature on the temperature, stress, and displacement distributions of the cooling stave were analyzed as the gas temperature inside the blast furnace rose from 1000 to 1600℃ in 900 s. The results show that both the temperature and temperature gradient of the hot side of CS increase when the gas flow temperature inside BF rises. The temperature gradient of the hot side of CS is greater than that of the other area of CS and it can reach 65℃/mm. In the vertical direction of the hot side of CS, closer to the central part of CS, the stress intensity is greater than that of the other area of the hot side of CS, which causes cracks on the hot side of CS in the vertical di- rection. As the gas temperature increases, the stress intensity rate near the fixed pin increases and finally reaches 45 MPa/s. Fatigues near the fixed pin and bolts are caused by great stress intensity rate and the area around the pin can be damaged easily. The edge of CS bends toward the cold side and the central part of CS shifts toward the hot surface.
