In recent years it has been recognized that tundishes playa critical
role in affecting the quality of the finished steel products.
Furthermore, proper tundish design may be even more important in the
development of the novel continuous casting pro- cesses that are now in
varying stages of realizatic)ll. Traditionally, physical modeling has
played a key role in tundish design, but the recently evolved
computational software packages, the readily accessible computa- tional
hardware, and, perhaps most important, the growing experience with
tackling a broad range of computational fluid flow problems within a
metallurgical context have made mathematical modeling an important
factor in this field. Our aim in writing this book has been to bring
realistic perspectives to tundish design. The main purpose is to provide
a good physical understanding of what is happening in tundishes,
together with a realistic discussion of topics that are still not quite
clear. The process metallurgist active in this field has many tools at
his or her disposal, including mathematical modeling, physical modeling,
and measure- ments on full plant-scale systems. In this monograph we
seek to show how these ideas may be combined to provide a good basic
understanding and, hence, an attempt at an optimal design.