Tundish design is of great importance for the stability of the casting process and for the quality of the cast product. This paper presents some criteria determined for the optimization of the flow pattern in the tundish, based on the casting experience and Computational Fluid Dynamics, Among such criteria can be mentioned a) steel temperature delivery to the strands, b) inclusions behaviour, c) entrapment of the cover tundish powder, d) erosion of the tundish refractory, etc. The determination of such criteria permits to optimize a tundish design very quickly and in the same time to standardize the tundish geometry according to the casting plant layout and productivity. Additionally, it will be presented the work done for the tuning of a new model that predicts the steel grade change in tundish. The transient fluid dynamics simulations for certain tundish geometry permit to investigate the steel mixing in tundish and strands, tuning the above model. These simulations consider the real tundish filling with new steel grade. For each strand this model predicts the temporally concentration of the two steels during the grade change. The model is set up on some dilution interconnecting elementary cells that describe the shroud and each strand. The cells are considered with uniform concentration. Such a kind of model is very useful in the definition of the technological practice for the steel grade change operation.
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