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The factors involved in simulating the continuous casting process of steel and the effects of the factors on the thermal behavior were investigated. The numerical methods and the influence of some assumptions were also analyzed, such as nodes used to discretize the steel in array size and computing time to obtain good approaches. The results show that some of these factors are related with the design of the continuous casting plant (CCP), such as geometrical configuration, and the operating conditions, such as water flow rate, heat removal coefficient in the mold, casting times, and casting speed in the strand, which affect the heat removal conditions over the temperature and solidification profiles.

The quality of steel produced by continuous casting depends mainly on the characteristics of the liquid steel flow pattern within the mold. This pattern depends on the flow dynamics of the nozzle that is immersed in liquid steel. This work characterizes the fluid dynamics within two separate submerged entry nozzle models with a square cross section bore. The Froude similarity criterion and water as working fluid have been used. The models consist of a square-shaped tube with one inlet and two lateral squared exits at the bottom. To enhance the flow visualization, the models do not have exit ports. Moreover, one of the models has a “pool,” a volume at the bottom, and the other prescinds of it. The geometrical parameters and operational conditions of physical experiments were reproduced in the numerical simulations. The turbulence model used in this work is large eddy simulation (LES) with dynamic k-equation filtering. It was found that transient numerical simulations reproduce the dynamic nature of the internal flow pattern seen in physical experiments. The results show that the flow pattern within the pool nozzle is defined by only one large vortex; on the other hand, in the nozzle, without the pool, the flow pattern achieves a complex behavior characterized by two small vortexes. This study will allow to build nozzles that produce a symmetric, regular fluid flow pattern inside the mold, which leads to improvements on the process such as low energy consumption and finally in cost reductions.

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