An Experimental Investigation of Continuous Casting Process: Effect of Pouring Temperatures on the Macrosegregation and Macrostructure in Steel Slab

Abstract

The solidification control is of extreme importance, because it strongly affects the final casting quality sanity. The structure obtained is generally not homogeneous and gives rise to great variations in composition, with position at small and large scales, which is known as segregation. An understanding of the way segregation occurs in continuous casting is of great importance for steels and in designing post-casting processes. As-cast structures are responsible the reduction in both scale and extension of segregation, because mass transport is dependent on the time required to diffuse a solute over a characteristic distance, e.g., the dendrite spacing that the characterizes the solidification structure. In this work, the effect of pouring temperature in steel slabs on the continuous casting processes are systematically investigated. Relationships between pouring temperature (P_T) and center macrosegregation was qualitatively examined. Photomicrographs of specimen taken from transverse sections of steel slabs, shows that macrosegregation is strongly affected by pouring temperature (P_T). For solute of carbon, phosphorus and sulfur, has been shown that the pouring temperature (P_T) has a significant role on the resulting macrosegregation profiles, while that the elements as such silicon, manganese and aluminum, the said thermal parameter seems not able to affect its macrosegregation profiles. This is due to the fact that the solutes with lower partition coefficients favors segregation during the continuous casting process. It is shown for considered steels, the pouring temperature (P_T) influences the position of the columnar to equiaxed transition (CET). Experimental results show that the end of the columnar region is abbreviated when lower pouring temperatures is used in continuous casting process. One can observe that as the pouring temperature (P_T) increase in continuous casting process, the secondary dendritic arm spacing (λ₂) increase, i.e., the dendritic morphology became coarsen.

Keywords:
Continuous casting process; solidification; pouring temperature; segregation and carbon steel