3-D Numerical Study of Impinging Water Jets in Run Out Table Cooling Processes

Cooling from impinging water jets in ROT processing depends on the fluid flow and depth of water accumulated in the water pool that forms on the surface of the moving steel strip. This effect is investigated with a 3-D computational model of fluid flow, pressure, and free surface motion for realistic ROT banks of nozzles. In this investigation, it is found that a deeper water pool is expected on the moving surface with increasing water flow rate and with increasing width. As the water pool height increases, the pressure on the moving surface decrease. In addition, a simple relation to predict the water pool height from the water flow rate per unit area and strip width has been derived.