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A Novel Control Technique for Longitudinal Off-Corner Depressions on Wide Faces of Continuous Casting Slabs: Design of a Convex Structure Mold

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Abstract

Continuous casting of wide-thick slabs has long been plagued by longitudinal off-corner depressions (LOCDs), which are generally accompanied by surface and subsurface cracks. It is believed that the uneven heat transfer in the mold has a significant influence on LOCD formation. To homogenize the mold heat transfer, a novel concept for the slab mold is proposed to accommodate the inherent nonlinear shrinkage of the solidifying shell by a convex structure cavity. Hereafter, the concept was concretized into a true mold design, and the main geometric parameters were numerically studied and optimized in sequence based on a multibody and multifield coupling model. The results show that the convex structure mold (CSM) could improve the contact state at the wide face by narrowing the shell–mold contact gap. With the convexity amount reaching 20 mm, the wide-face corner gap is thoroughly closed, and the shell growth at the off-corner becomes more even. At the narrow face, the convex structure design leads to a large shell deformation, which cannot be fitted by the corner accommodation in the predesigns. After improving the corner structure in the redesigns, the large contact gap at the narrow-face corner is also closed, and the hot spots around shell corners are all eliminated. Herein, the deformation resistance of the solidifying shell is greatly enhanced. Furthermore, the distances between shallow water channels and the mold hot face are adjusted to be equidistant. As a result, the transverse distribution of the heat flux at the meniscus becomes uniform, which may be helpful to avoid longitudinal cracks during peritectic steel casting. Through these optimizations, the practicality of CSM significantly improved.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 51975510).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Research Center for Equipment and Technology of Cold Strip Rolling, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, P.R. China

    Zhenyu Niu, Fengshan Du & Hui Yu

  2. College of Mechanical Engineering, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, P.R. China

    Zhenyu Niu, Fengshan Du & Hui Yu

  3. School of Metallurgy, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, P.R. China

    Jiyin Jiang

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  1. Zhenyu Niu
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Niu, Z., Du, F., Jiang, J. et al. A Novel Control Technique for Longitudinal Off-Corner Depressions on Wide Faces of Continuous Casting Slabs: Design of a Convex Structure Mold. Metall Mater Trans B 54, 1205–1227 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11663-023-02755-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11663-023-02755-y

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