Discussion on “Review of Physical and Numerical Approaches for the Study of Gas Stirring in Ladle Metallurgy”

Excerpt

Physical and mathematical modeling of ladle metallurgy steelmaking has been a subject of great interest to steelmakers for several decades. During the last fifty years or so, numerous investigations have been carried out, both in academia and in industry, to help create a robust knowledge base for ladle metallurgy steelmaking. Parallel to these, excellent review articles have also been published by several investigators summarizing periodic progresses.[1‐4] The first review on the subject was published by the present authors[1] in 1995, to summarize the many physical and mathematical modeling studies on ladle metallurgy steelmaking carried out during the period 1976 to 1994. This was followed by a subsequent review of the modeling of secondary steelmaking, by Sichen,[2] almost twenty years later. A recent addition to these is the work of Liu and coworkers,[4] in which, research work carried out during the last three decades, generally on physical modeling and numerical simulation of inert gas stirring in ladles, and particularly on (i) mixing, (ii) gas bubble formation, (iii) inclusion behavior, and (iv) open eye formation phenomena, has been summarized. The review[4] is timely and summarizes a large number of investigations carried out in the above-mentioned areas, capturing successfully the progress in ladle metallurgy steelmaking research in recent years. Nonetheless, some obscurities, omissions, and errors remain in that work.[4] These are pointed out in the following text where they are discussed further. They represent the purpose of the present communication. …