Optimization of Secondary Cooling Water Distribution for Improving the Billet Quality for a Small Caster

抄録

In order to eliminate internal cracks and other defects of billet caused by improper secondary cooling water distribution for a small caster, a mathematical heat transfer model for billet continuous casting has been presented and solved by finite volume method. For calibrating model better, the surface temperature of billet has been measured by using high resolution CCD measurement system, which can effective eliminate the influence of randomly generated oxide scales for the surface temperature measurement. Then, the existing problems of the secondary cooling water distribution have been discussed and the secondary cooling water distribution of each zone has been optimized at key casting speeds. A new secondary cooling water distribution has been regressed and analyzed. This secondary cooling water distribution can increase the casting speed, minimize the reheating of billet, and minimize the wide fluctuations of secondary cooling water at higher casting speed region. This can improve the billet quality. Finally, the new secondary cooling water distribution has been applied on an actual small caster, it has shown that the billet defects have been decreased greatly and the quality of billet has been obviously improved.

The schematic of the continuous casting process.