Numerical Simulations of Electromagnetic Flow Controls for the Continuous Casting Process of Steel
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
mechatronics2012
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Electromagnetic breaking and stirring are commonly used techniques for the flow control of liquid steel in the continuous casting process for the production of slabs, blooms and billets. The optimization of this electromagnetic flow control in view of product quality and energy efficiency must be based on a deep knowledge of the interaction between magnetic field and liquid steel flow. The continuous casting takes place in a rather harsh environment. Therefore plant measurements are very difficult or nearly impossible to perform. For various reasons measurements on laboratory models of the process are also hard to perform. Thus numerical simulations are very important means to get detailed information of the flow under the effect of electromagnetic fields.
In the conducted simulations the full interaction between the magnetic field and the liquid steel flow is considered. While the liquid steel flow is always simulated with the commercial FV (finite volume) flow solver FLUENT, two different approaches are presented for the calculation of the magnetic field. In the first approach the FLUENT MHD add-on module is used thereby using the benefits of a monolithic solver. In the second approach the magnetic field is calculated with ANSYS Emag, a FEM (finite element method) solver optimized for electromagnetic calculations. For this coupled approach MpCCI is used to exchange the coupling quantities ? the velocity field of the steel flow and the Lorentz force densities ? between FLUENT and ANSYS. The mesh used for the electromagnetic solver differs in terms of geometry and mesh fineness, due to different solvers? requirements. So the data interpolation between the meshes plays an important role in terms of accuracy and computational efforts.
An overview over our research activities in continuous casting of steel with electromagnetic stirring and breaking will be presented.
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