Splash sheet characteristics induced by the impingement of multiple jets in a steelmaking converter

Abstract

In oxygen steelmaking, one important aspect is to depict the splashing induced by the impingement of multiple jets quantitatively. In this paper, experiments were conducted to investigate the splash sheets. The results demonstrated that with the decrease of lance height, the sheet area increased, while the sheet height decreased. The sheet diameter was much less affected by the gas flow rate compared to the sheet height. The cavity width-to-depth ratio is a critical parameter affecting the sheet shape. The sheet area produced by the 5-nozzle jet was larger than that produced by the 6-nozzle jet. Taking the sheet area reduction as the critical condition where the cavity mode changes from splashing to penetrating, the critical lance height was investigated under various ejecting conditions. This was further represented by the blowing number as a normalized formula. At last, curve fitting illustrating the conditions that lead to the penetrating mode was conducted.