Scaling estimations of thermal and flow field in gas-stirred ladles

Abstract

To obtain a better understanding of the physical process involved in gas stirring of a steelmaking vessel, a scaling analysis approach is developed that accounts for the effects of natural convection and axisymmetric bottom gas injection in the vessel. The orders of magnitude of some important quantities such as the transient velocity scale, thermal boundary layer thickness, and the critical flow rate to homogenize the thermal stratification in the molten steel are predicted successfully.