PRACTICAL APPROACH FOR CHARACTERIZING THE PROJECTION OF STAINLESS-STEEL DROPLETS: VACUUM DECARBURIZATION PLANT

This work contributes to study the particle projection mechanism during gas injection on a molten steel bath surface. The studied element is called “dome”. It results from a cluster of particles which is propelled and molded onto the vault of the VOD installation. A bibliographical analysis of previous projection studies leads toward two main topics: an analytic model to characterize the collected projections and a chemical analysis to trace the emission droplets. The main result leads to observe that the predicted droplet size and dome quantity go hand in hand with results obtained experimentally for the studied casting. Indeed, based on semi-empirical equations in literature, an analytical model predicts an average propelled particle size of about 500 μm with a dome mass of one-Ton. Furthermore, the metallographic analysis of some samples highlight a crystallization of seeds linked each other and, the presence of spherical droplets size between 100 and 800 µm.