ANALYSIS OF HIGH-TEMPERATURE BEHAVIOR OF SOLIDIFIED MATERIAL WITHIN A CONTINUOUS-CASTING MACHINE

The continuous casting of metals is determined by a multitude of degrees of freedom, the combination of which conditions the quality of the products. To investigate in a theoretical way the principal possibilities that influence the process, an analysis is performed to simulate the high-temperature behaviour of the solidified material within the continuous casting machine, i.e. within the mould (with respect to contact and shrink gap formation) and the following secondary cooling zone (regarding support rolls and spray cooling). For the simulation of mass transport, solidification and/or remelting, and heat transfer, a finite difference method is applied; for the calculation of the thermomechanical stresses and strains the ADINA program is used as a finite clement method. Both thermal and stress analysis have been iteratively coupled to consider feedback. Emphasis is put on the highly nonlinear material behaviour at temperatures near the solidification temperature as well as on the three-dimensional and transient contact between strand and mould. To guarantee both accuracy and effectiveness of computation, there is need for a problem-specific discretization, load history and stress-state formulation, material modelling, and coupling strategy.