Effects of electrically conductive walls on turbulent magnetohydrodynamic flow in a continuous casting mold

Abstract

In the present study, we have performed a series of numerical simulations of the turbulent liquid metal flow in a laboratory-scale setup of the continuous casting. The liquid metal flow was subjected to an external non-uniform magnetic field reproducing a realistic electromagnetic brake (EMBr) effect. The focus of this research was on the effects of the finite electrical conductivity of Hartmann walls on the flow and turbulence in the mold. To be able to simulate distributions of the electric potential and current in both the fluid and solid wall domains, we applied our recently developed and validated in-house conjugate MHD solver based on the open-source code OpenFOAM. The dynamic Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method was used to simulate the turbulent flow. The results obtained for the neutral (non-MHD) and MHD cases over a range of the imposed EMBr strengths – all for the perfectly electrically insulated walls – were compared with the available Ultrasound Doppler Velocimetry (UDV) measurements. A good agreement between simulations and experiments was obtained for all simulated cases. Next, we completed a series of simulations including a wide range of the finite electric conductivities (ranging from a weakly to perfectly conducting wall conditions) of the Hartmann walls for a fixed value of the imposed EMBr. The obtained results demonstrated a significant influence of the electric wall conductivities on the flow and turbulence reorganization. It is expected that here provided insights can be applicable for the new generation of the laboratory- and real-scale continuous casting setups.