Modeling of Clogging and Erosion of Nozzle Refractories in Steel Casting

B.G. Thomas, O. Araromi

Continuous Casting Consortium, LWB Refractories

Depending on their composition relative to the inclusions in the steel, the walls of nozzle refractories can clog or erode, leading to severe quality problems in cast products.  These phenomena have rarely been subjected to fundamental modeling, and never to computational modeling involving the several coupled phenomena that govern it: the turbulent flow of molten steel through the nozzle, contacting of solid inclusions in the steel with the nozzle wall, heat transfer in the wall and steel, the diffusion of compounds such as Al2O3 and CaO through the nozzle wall, and the thermodynamics of the chemical reactions that form solid precipitates, or liquefy the inclusions, allowing them erode from the walls.  With the support of numerous experimental measurements that have been made for this project, computational models will be developed to increase understanding of this important, yet complex problem.