Abstract
Maintaining competitiveness in steel manufacturing requires improving process efficiency and production volume whilst enhancing product quality and performance. This is particularly challenging for producing value-added advanced steel grades such as advanced high strength steels and electrical steels. These grades due to higher weight percentage of alloying elements cause difficulties in various stages of upstream and downstream processing, and this includes continuous casting, wherein high solute levels are critical towards macro-segregation. Interface growth direction in systems with more than one component is dictated by the solute profile ahead of the moving solidification front. Understanding the profile of growth direction with casting process parameters during the progress of casting will provide an important perspective towards reducing the macro-segregation in the cast product. In the present study, two steel slab samples from conventional slab caster under the influence of electromagnetic brake (EMBR) at Tata Steel in IJmuiden (The Netherlands) have been investigated for dendrite deflection measurements. The samples showed a transition zone where a change in the deflection behavior occurs. Also, the magnitude of the deflection angle decreases away from the slab surface. Correlating these experimental data with modeled fluid flow profile will help in improving the understanding of the dynamic nature of the solute advancement so that the casting parameters can be optimized to improve product quality.
Highlights
It is well known that the change of state of a system is governed by the systems thermodynamics[1] which is based on the fundamental principle of Gibbs’s free energy minimization and isolation criterion
Forced convection due to bulk fluid flow[3] within the liquid melt will further enhance the kinetics of the solute transport process which might have an additional influence on the interface growth direction
Two steel slab samples from an industrial thick slab caster were investigated for the variation in dendrite deflection from the slab surface towards the slab centre
Summary
It is well known that the change of state of a system is governed by the systems thermodynamics[1] which is based on the fundamental principle of Gibbs’s free energy minimization and isolation criterion. The growth direction of a solid phase during the process of solidification indicates the direction of the interface movement between solid (S) and liquid (L) phases. The growth kinetics of the solid phase is governed by thermodynamic equilibrium and diffusion processes occurring at the interface, primarily in the liquid phase. Bulk fluid flow can enhance the diffusion processes in the liquid phase. The morphology and the distribution of the solid phase typically called the “microstructure” in the cast-product of the industrial alloys (mostly multi-component) will depend on the evolution of the solute profile in front of the moving interface. Forced convection due to bulk fluid flow[3] ( called macro-scale flow) within the liquid melt will further enhance the kinetics of the solute transport process which might have an additional influence on the interface growth direction
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