Student Success Story: Ogochukwu Duruiheme
Ogochukwu Duruiheme
Congratulations to Ogochukwu Duruiheme who recently defended her thesis entitled: “Numerical Analysis of Dissolution Behavior of Microalloying Elements in Ladle Metallurgy Furnace.” Her advice for current and future students to successfully defend their thesis is to pick a topic early, Review the literature on it, and know the fundamentals. Time moves fast when you are working hard towards a goal. Managing your deadlines can save you a lot of headaches. Persistence and discipline were her greatest assets in garnering knowledge for her thesis.
CIVS is the beginning everyone needs in kick-starting their technical career. It opens you up to a world of discipline and yearning to be better than you were by achieving and exceeding set expectations. The resources are already there, all you have to do is learn.
In her academic career at Purdue Northwest, Ogochukwu Duruiheme worked on the Refining Ladle project, which involves facilities that cast steel to make a final product. The steel needs to be refined first. The industry standard practice is to use a refining ladle. The steel is treated with additives to remove impurities or add additional elements to create different alloys of steel. It then stirs via gas injection to ensure an even product mix and help with the steel cleaning process. Different additive materials can have different mixing behaviors. The goal is to use Computational Fluid Dynamics to model the steel mixing process for different materials and conditions. This optimizes the process more specifically.
Nucor Steel provided the industry data for this project in partnership with other member companies of the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium.
