A production planning and design model for assessing the thermal behaviour of thick steel strip during continuous heat treatment

This paper presents a theoretical model to determine the temperature variation of steel strip as it passes through a continuous-cooling line. The model permits the temperature along the strip to be determined and includes the effect of strip thickness to be taken into account. The model may be used in three ways. These are: (a) to determine the strip temperature distribution having specified the external surface heat transfer coefficient as a boundary condition and hence to specify the required length of the cooling line and the nature of the cooling technology appropriate to the thermal duty required, (b) to examine the effect of changing operational parameters, such as the strip thickness and line speed, on an existing cooling line so that required production rates are matched to the thermal characteristics of the line and (c) to specify the distribution of the heat transfer coefficient along the cooling line in order to achieve a metallurgical prescribed timewise cooling history. The paper includes a set of examples that illustrate these applications of the model.