Influence of argon gas bubbles and non-metallic inclusions on the flow behavior in steel continuous casting

The present study uses an Eulerian–Lagrangian approach to model the 3D turbulence ( k–ɛ) flow of the steel melt (continuous phase) and the trajectories of individual non-metallic inclusions and gas bubbles (dispersed phase) in a continuous casting. The dispersed phase is considered as numerous mass-loaded particles with different classes of diameters and densities. To consider the interaction between the continuous and the dispersed phases two different methods are studied and compared. The first method, i.e. the one-way coupling, considers only the impact of the melt flow on the trajectories of the dispersed phases, while the influence of the dispersed phases on the melt flow is ignored. With the second method, namely the two-way coupling, both bidirectional influences are considered. The presented results indicate that coupling the bidirectional interactions is essential to get realistic results, especially in the presence of large gas bubbles.