In Situ Measurement and Prediction of Stresses and Strains During Casting of Steel

Modeling the thermo-mechanical behavior of steel during casting is of great importance for the prediction of distortions and cracks. In this study, an elasto-visco-plastic constitutive law is calibrated with mechanical measurements from casting experiments. A steel bar is solidified in a sand mold and strained by applying a force to bolts that are embedded in the two ends of the bar. The temporal evolutions of the restraint force and the bar's length change are measured in situ. The experiments are simulated by inputting calculated transient temperature fields into a finite element stress analysis that employs the measured forces as boundary conditions. The thermal strain predictions are validated using data from experiments without a restraint. Initial estimates of the constitutive model parameters are obtained from available mechanical test data involving reheated steel specimens. The temperature dependence of the strain rate sensitivity exponent is then adjusted until the measured and predicted length changes of the strained bars agree. The resulting calibrated mechanical property dataset is valid for the high-temperature austenite phase of steel. The data reveal a significantly different mechanical behavior during casting compared to what the stress-strain data from reheated specimens show.