Hot Tearing Modeling: A Microstructural Approach Applied to Steel Solidification

Abstract

Hot tearing during solidification processes has been deeply investigated in past and recent years through testing, modeling, and development of a number of macroscopic hot tearing criteria. The objective is predicting the crack occurrence during industrial solidification processes, which, in the steel production, are mainly ingot and continuous casting. The present work is inspired by the criterion proposed in the work of Bellet et al.[1] called CBC criterion, from which the methodological approach and experimental data used for calibration, related to nine carbon steels, have been derived. The proposed hot tearing criterion adopts as parameters: primary and secondary arm spacing, the mechanical resistance near the solidus temperature, the solidification parameters G (gradient) and v (dendrite tip velocity), the brittle range extension in the dendritic front and the temperature of formation of manganese sulfides. The new formulation is an attempt to substitute to brittle temperature range and steel content, appearing in the CBC criterion, the dendritic structure characteristics, in the aim of: (a) moving toward a generalized expression of the cracking index applicable to different steel classes; (b) introducing the dependence of the crack susceptibility on the cooling conditions. The agreement of the new hot tearing index values with the experimental ones is of the same kind as that of the CBC criterion, indicating that the parameters and the dependences adopted in the new criterion make a sense. Further study and experimental work are needed to assess the influence of the microstructure morphology on the hot cracking sensitivity and to check the suitability of the approach to a wider range of steel compositions.