Structural optimisation of three-strand asymmetric tundish for super large round bloom continuous casting

In recent years, there has been significant development in the large-scale utilisation of round bloom continuous casting, which has led to an increase in the strand spacing of the tundish. However, this increase often accompanies issues such as poor consistency among each strand. This study focuses on the three-strand asymmetric tundish used in super-large round bloom continuous casting and uses a combination of numerical simulation and physical experiment to investigate the impact of different dam and retaining wall structures on the flow, temperature and removal of inclusions in the super-large round bloom tundish. The reliability of the model is verified through isothermal Water model experiments. The results indicate that by employing an optimised flow control structure with a U-shaped retaining wall featuring small diversion holes and a dam near each of strands No.1 and No.3, several improvements are achieved compared to the prototype tundish. The dead zone ratio of the tundish is reduced by 16.33%, the standard deviation of average residence time decreases by 167.07 s, the volume of the tundish's low temperature zone decreases by 7.79% and the total inclusion removal ratio increases by 14.44%. By appropriately incorporating dams, reducing the area of diversion holes and modifying the retaining wall structure in the tundish, the flow, temperature and inclusion removal consistency of each strand can be effectively improved. This enhances the overall metallurgical efficiency of the tundish. Even when encountering strand blocking operation, the dead zone ratio can be further reduced to 22.44% using the optimised structure proposed in this study. This demonstrates that the optimised structure not only improves the steady-state metallurgical behaviour of the asymmetric three-strand tundish with large strand spacing for super-large round bloom but is also suitable for addressing unsteady-state metallurgical behaviour caused by on-site working conditions, such as production scheduling or high casting speed. By implementing the findings of this study, it is expected that the efficiency and effectiveness of the super-large round bloom continuous casting process will be significantly enhanced.