Numerical Simulation of Fluid Flow and Lubricant Powder Behavior in ‎Steel ‎Continuous Casting Mold for Improving of Produced Ingot Properties ‎

Many studies have been performed to improve the quality and cleanliness of steel ‎ingots produced by continuous casting process. One of the important defects is entrapping of mold lubricant ‎powder in the ingot. In the paper, the mathematical modeling methods and ‎computational fluid dynamic (CFD) were used to investigate the powder fluid behavior during ‎continuous casting of steel. For this purpose, the factors of powder entrapping and the behavior of the ‎powder in the melt were investigated and some solutions were proposed to prevent these ‎defects. Therefore, the boundary and initial conditions were studied in developed model and the ‎effect of each one were investigated. The results showed ‎that it can be possible to prevent the ‎powder entrapping in the steel ingot by decreasing the casting speed from 0.9 to 0.76 m/min, increasing the nozzle dip depth from ‎‎130 to 140 mm, decreasing the nuzzle diameter from 42 to 36mm, decreasing the powder ‎particles size from 500 to 63 micrometers and by pouring of clean steel melt without the large inclusions.‎