Experimental Evaluation of MHD Modeling of EMS During Continuous Casting

Electromagnetic stirring (EMS) has been recognized as a mature technique in steel industry to control the as-cast structure of steel continuous casting (CC), and computational magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) methods have been applied to study the EMS efficiency. Most MHD methods de-coupled the calculations of electromagnetic and flow fields or simplifications were made for the flow–electromagnetic interactions. However, the experimental validations of the MHD modeling have been rarely reported or very limited. In this study, we present a benchmark, i.e., a series of laboratory experiments, to evaluate the MHD methods, which have been typically applied for steel CC process. Specifically, a rotating magnetic field (RMF) with variable intensity and frequency is considered. First experiment is performed to measure the distribution of magnetic field without any loaded sample (casting); the second experiment is conducted to measure the RMF-induced torque on a cylindrical sample (different metals/alloys in solid state); the third experiment is (based on a special device) to measure the RMF-induced rotational velocity of the liquid metal (Ga75In25), which is enclosed in a cylindrical crucible. The MHD calculation is performed by coupling ANSYS Maxwell and ANSYS Fluent. The Lorentz force, as calculated by analytical equations, ANSYS Fluent addon MHD module, and external electromagnetic solver, is added as the source term in Navier–Stokes equation. By comparing the simulation results with the benchmark experiments, the calculation accuracy with different coupling methods and modification strategies is evaluated. Based on this, a necessary simplification strategy of the MHD method for CC is established, and application of the simplified MHD method to a CC process is demonstrated.