Jukka Laine

New Continuous Casting and Slab Tracking Simulators for Steel Industry

Research group of Metallurgy at Aalto University has been developing simulation models and tools for continuous casting since from the early 80s. The main models developed are the heat transfer model, DYN3D, and the solidification and microstructure model IDS. The models have been further developed and integrated to a continuous casting simulator and to a slab simulator. The continuous casting simulator calculates the important phenomena taking place in the strand during casting and the slab simulator calculates the phenomena taking place in the slabs when they are transferred from caster to reheating furnace. The numerical solution algorithms in the simulators are so fast that they can be used in on-line applications. The simulators have today many new options as hydrogen removal and quality prediction modules. In this paper, the simulators and their modules are presented.

Modelling of microstructure in steel continuous casting: overview and presentation of the IDS tool

IDS is a thermodynamic-kinetic tool for simulation of solidification phenomena and phase transformations in steels, from liquid down to room temperature. IDS calculates important thermophysical material properties (enthalpy, thermal conductivity, density, etc.). The model takes into account the effect of solutes C, Si, Mn, P, S, Cr, Mo, Ni, Cu, Al, N, Nb, Ti, V, Ca, B, O, H, cooling rate and dendrite arm diameter. The model has been developed at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, since 1984. In addition, IDS is coupled with ChemApp (GTT-Technologies, Germany) to simulate multiphase inclusions during solidification. This paper summarises the features of the model including the future plans. Case calculations of continuous casting, heat treatment and inclusion formation are presented.