impact of casting speed on mould wall TEMPERATURE FIELD

Production of new steel grades and growing demands on productivity require an increasing understanding of heat transfer during the continuous casting process. This work is focused on a mould which has a great influence on the casting process and the final quality of billets. Casting speed has to be adapted to the steel parameters and the format of the product. The temperature field of the mould changes with the casting speed. From the temperature field, the contact of the solid shell with the mould insert and the intensity and symmetry of heat removal can be deduced. Temperature measurements were conducted in the mould walls on site. It was found that increasing the casting speed reduced the temperature gradient in the longitudinal direction and caused a decrease in the unevenness of the temperature field in the transverse direction, which was expressed by the so-called thermal axis. A percentage increase in mould temperatures that followed the increase in casting speed, exhibited close to a linear dependency on the distance from the mould top. Based on the presented data, the increase in casting speed caused a more uniform temperature field in the mould insert, which is related to a more uniform heat removal from the billet.