The residual steel remaining after casting is dumped from the ladle and constitutes a direct yield loss to steelmakers.Draining large quantities of ladle slag into the tundish can directly decrease the steel quality produced and may lead tocasting interruption by mould breakouts.In order to decrease the amount of residual steel left inside the ladle without increasing the amount of ladle slag carryoverinto the tundish, the ladle bottom geometry needs to be optimized. The goal is to delay the vortexing and surfacecollapse of the ladle slag.With the aid of Computational Fluid Dynamics-(CFD), several features of the ladle bottom geometry have beenanalyzed in terms of draining performance such as vortex and surface collapse formation. The size of the ladle, thedistance of the outlet to the side walls, the ladle bottom floor angle or slope, and the presence of a raised impact in theoutlet vicinity include the major variables that have been studied extensively.The design implementation of the numerical study results has lead to the development of a new generation of ladlebottom floor. The Enhanced Ladle Bottom Yield;;ELBY, reduces the remaining steel after draining. Extensive field trialshave confirmed the superior draining performance of the ELBY ladle bottom, and have shown a close correlation to theCFD prediction.
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