VISUALISATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE FLUID FLOW STRUCTURE INSIDE AN ELLIPTICAL STEELMAKING LADLE THROUGH IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

The understanding of the fluid flow conditions during the liquid steel stirringtreatment in the ladle is an important issue to optimize the steelmaking process.In this sense, in this article, a cold physical model in reduced scale of a gasstirredladle has been built and investigated through image processingtechniques to evaluate its velocity field. The gas has been injected in 3 differentpositions of the ladle base and the resulted fluid flow has been analyzed by theImage Processing Velocimetry technique, using the PIV mode (Particle ImageVelocimetry). Such analysis was qualitative and aimed at verifying and atunderstanding previously obtained results through dye tracer tests and mixingtimes. Whenever it has been possible, our results have been compared withother ones found in the literature.