CIVS Research Presented at ArcelorMittal Global CFD Days

April 2, 2024

On March 20, 2024, CIVS Director Chenn Zhou and CIVS research students Shiyu Wang and Abhishek Kolakotla were invited to showcase CIVS’ research achievements in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics at the 9th bi-annual ArcelorMittal Global R&D CFD & Thermo-Mechanics Days. This virtual event took place March 18-21, 2024, to share information on cutting-edge CFD research in iron and steelmaking with expert research colleagues from Canada, Brazil, Belgium, France, the U.S., and worldwide.

Dr. Chenn Zhou, CIVS Director, presented “Smart Steel Manufacturing through Simulations: Overview of SMSVC Activities.”  She summarized the latest developments of the SMSVC projects in Blast Furnaces, Electric Arc Furnaces, Reheating Furnaces, Ladel, Continuous Casting, and Safety.  She also described nine recent multimillion-dollar DOE grants led or partnered by CIVS for cutting-edge collaborative efforts such as Hydrogen utilization in reheating furnaces and direct iron and steel reactors.  These projects will focus on research, development, and demonstration in industrial decarbonization, digitalization, and workforce development to achieve smarter and greener steel manufacturing by 2030.

Shiyu Wang, CIVS Research Assistant, presented “Integrated CFD Model for the EAF: Recent Progress” to give an overall introduction to the stage-by-stage approach to developing comprehensive and integrated EAF-CFD modeling. This series of models (Electric Arc Model, Coherent Jet Model, and Scrap Melting Model) has provided insights and practical guidance to SMSVC member companies for their EAF operations.

Abhishek Kolakotla, CIVS Research Assistant, presented “Modeling of Hydrogen Combustion in Reheating Furnace” which gave a deeper understanding and preliminary results of research into H2 as fuel in a Reheating Furnace.. The new DOE project on the Development and Demonstration of an Industrial Hydrogen-Fired Steel Reheating Furnace was also presented as it plans to lead the first-of-its-kind field demonstration at Gerdau Special Steel Monroe using H2 supply from Linde.

ArcelorMittal is a charter member of the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC), an industry-led sustainable consortium founded by CIVS in 2016.