Numerical analysis of the twin-roll casting of thin aluminium-steel clad strips

Abstract

The production of thin aluminium-steel clad strips by means of twin-roll casting is one of the prospective trends in the development of sheet production. The main advantages of twin-roll casting are low specific energy and resource consumption. Besides this, the resulting compound has a high bonding strength owing to the presence of a continuous thin layer of intermetallic phases having an approximate thickness of 3 µm at the interface of the two metals. At the same time, the quality of the clad strip depends on the microstructure and properties of the aluminium layer formed directly from a melt. A deformation immediately following the solidification of the metal between the two rotated, internally water-cooled rolls has a substantial influence on this aluminium layer. Due to the complexity of observing the processes occurring in the melt pool, a numerical simulation became one of the main methods for their investigation. Simulation is widely used to describe the process of twin-roll casting of monomaterial strips, but so far it has not been used for to comprehensively analyse the process of twin-roll casting of clad strips. In the present paper, a two-dimentional finite-element simulation of the system “clad strip—water-cooled rolls” using the ANSYS software is proposed. A joint analysis is carried out of the heat transfer, viscous flow of aluminium melt, its solidification and deformation resulting in the temperature distribution in the cast metal as well as in the tool. The dependences of the deformation strain and outlet temperature of the clad strip on the main technological process parameters; obtained by numerical simulation, are shown.