Argon Bubble Coalescence and Breakup in a Steel Ladle with Bottom Plugs

Gas‐stirred ladles are widely used in the steel secondary refining process. In order to produce high‐quality steel, a range of stirring conditions, from hard stirring for mixing to gentle stirring for inclusion removal, is required. In this paper, a full scale unsteady three‐dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to simulate the bubble behavior in a steel ladle. A volume of fluid (VOF)‐Lagrangian approach is applied to simulate multiphase flow characteristics. The VOF method is used to track the liquid steel and slag, while the Lagrangian method is used to track the movement of argon bubbles. A water model is used to validate the gas‐stirred ladle model against experimental data. Flow field and bubble breakup and coalescence phenomena inside the ladle is studied in the baseline case, and the effects of initial bubble diameter and gas flow rate during the stirring process have been investigated through parametric study as well.