An effective 3-D inverse procedure to retrieve cooling conditions in an aluminium alloy continuous casting problem

The paper discusses a three-dimensional numerical solution of the inverse boundary problem for a continuous casting process of an aluminium alloy. Because verified information of heat flux distribution is crucial for a good mould design, effective cooling system and the whole caster in general, the main goal of the analysis presented within the paper is identifying of the heat fluxes along the external surface of the ingot. To model the solidification process, an enthalpy-porosity technique implemented in a commercial package was used. In this method, the phase change interface was determined based on the liquid fraction approach. In the inverse procedure, a sensitivity analysis was used to estimate the boundary condition retrieval. While the measured temperatures required to solve the problem are always burdened by measurement errors, a comparison of the measured and retrieved values showed a computational high accuracy. The average percentage error of the sensors was considerably lower than the maximum percentage error of the numerically simulated measurements. In addition, the computationally effective method was independent of the mesh size, the starting value of the assumed boundary condition and the maximum error of measurements used for calculations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.