Exploration of the Design Space in Continuous Casting Tundish

Abstract

Due to the stringent requirements of industry, it has become extremely important to have a careful control over the required performance and properties of steels. Performance and properties of advanced high strength steel depend significantly on its cleanliness. Cleanliness is achieved by restricting the inclusion count to a permissible limit. Over the past few years, there has been increased use of tundish, a device that acts as a buffer between ladle and mold, for controlling inclusions. Apart from facilitating inclusion removal, tundish also maintains low dead volume and thermal and chemical homogeneity, which is required for smooth casting operation. Thus, performance of the tundish operation greatly influences the properties and quality of the cast slab. Tundish performance is generally assessed using parameters such as inclusion removal efficiency, dead volume within tundish and effectiveness in maintaining the desired amount of superheat. But, the aforesaid parameters are conflicting in nature. Managing the conflict and providing a satisficing solution based on the customer requirements become essential. In this paper, we present an approach to manage the conflicts involved in designing a tundish. An integrated framework, by linking meta-models with compromise Decision Support Problem (cDSP) construct, is developed to determine a satisficing solution considering conflicting requirements. The utility of the framework is illustrated by providing decision support when an existing configuration for tundish is unable to meet the requirements. This has been done by exploring the design space of tundish and coming up with a design and operating set points suitable for a particular purpose. This approach can be instantiated for other unit operations involved in steel manufacturing. In the future, each unit operation can be integrated to provide a complete picture of steel manufacturing which in turn will help in reducing the time and cost incurred in the development of new materials and products.