The Design of New Submerged Entry Nozzles for Beam-Blank Continuous Casting

Two types of radial flow submerged entry nozzle (SEN) were proposed to overcome the shortcomings of the straight SEN which has been widely used since the first beam-blank caster was installed in Algoma Steel over four decades ago. One radial flow SEN was designed with the purpose of “self-braking”, with which fluid flow velocity in the mold can be reduced and the inclusion removal ratio can be increased. However, the “self-braking” gives a rise to a negative effect of confining too much superheat to a small region in the mold, which will cause serious quality problems and increase the risk of breakouts. Thereby another radial flow SEN was designed, which could avoid the heat concentrating by an asymmetrical flow pattern. In this paper, advantages and disadvantages of these three SENs for beam-blank continuous casting were discussed in detail by using numerical simulation, water modeling and industrial trials.