Effects of Multiple-Hole Baffle Arrangements on Flow Fields in a Five-Strand Asymmetric Tundish

This paper reports on the re-engineering of standard five-strand tundish designs into a five-strand asymmetric tundish, which resulted in a non-uniform rate and bias for each strand. We sought to improve the casting conditions by optimizing the liquid steel flow-field in the tundish. Both a water modelling experiment and a numerical simulation were performed to analyze the flow-field according to various diversion hole diameters and injection angles. The results showed that the average residence time decreased as the diameter of the diversion holes increased. As the injection angle was increased, the average residence time initially decreased and then increased. The liquid steel from the ladle shroud rapidly extended to the #2 and #3 strands in the original tundish, which reduced the likelihood of inclusion collision and coalescence.