Simulation of large plate castings in counter-gravity mould filling process based on single-phase LBM

The single-phase free surface lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) was used to investigate the counter-gravity mould filling process of large plate castings. Computational efficiency can be improved by ignoring the variation of the gas lattice. In this paper, a weight coefficient redistribution method was proposed for dealing with the liquid phase discharge problem and distribution in a grid. First, the model was used to calculate the anti-gravity filling process of a large plate cavity with a single gate, with the same parameters, the water filling experiment of high speed camera is taken as a reference, the characteristics of the flow field and the fluid morphology of numerical simulation are in good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, the velocity profile of the flow field is used to analyze the characteristics of the flow field, and a criterion called "the altitude difference of free surface" is introduced to evaluate the stability of the fluid. Subsequently, the counter-gravity filling process of a plate with a double gate and the same plate with one gate and a cylindrical obstruction to turbulent flow are investigated. Due to the mutual influence between the two gates, the vortex formed by the double gates is greater than that formed by the single gate. However, the obstacles under the conditions of cylindrical turbulent flow obstruction could reduce the degree of fluid sloshing and improve the stability of the filling.