Hydrodynamic performance of steelmaking tundish systems: A comparative study of three different tundish designs

Extensive water modelling was carried out to ascertain the influence of various types of baffle designs on the hydrodynamic performance of three different designs of steelmaking tundish systems. These included, a two-strand slab casting tundish, a six-strand billet casting tundish and a five-strand, skewed, delta shaped tundish. Plant scale operating conditions were scaled down respecting both geometric and Froude similarity and on the basis of the latter, the inflow rate of water into the model tundish systems was estimated via: Q(m) = lambda(5/2) Q(f.s). To quantify the hydrodynamic performance, residence time distribution (RTD) characteristics were measured using the conductivity measurement technique for a wide range of baffle designs. From such measurements as well as from flow visualisation studies, the following general observations have been made. The optimum design of baffles together with its number and position within the tundish appear to be a strong function of the basic tundish design (viz., the geometry, the number of operating strands etc.). Of the various types of baffles investigated in this work (dam, dam + weir, baffles with holes etc.), appropriately designed slotted baffles appear to modify the RTD characteristics most favourably towards superior metallurgical performances. Increase in the number of strands, asymmetricity in the tundish design and flawed operating conditions, (viz., large width to length ratio) were all found to influence the tundish performance adversely. A comparison of experimental results for the three tundish systems indicated that changing the characteristics of the baffle design can lead to significant performance improvement in the case of the two symmetric tundish systems (e.g., the two and the six strand tundishes), the five strand skewed, delta shaped tundish was, however, found to be somewhat insensitive to such changes. For such a tundish geometry, no design of the flow-modification devices tried, could bring the hydrodynamic performance any closer to the best results obtained for the two other tundish systems, Possible reasons for such observations are discussed in the text.