Wilfried Schäfer, Götz Hartmann, Erik Hepp, MAGMA GmbH, Aachen, Germany
Dieter G. Senk, Sonja Stratemeier, IEHK RWTH Aachen University, Germany
ABSTRACT
Over many years, the liquid metal flow in steel continuous casting tundishes and moulds, the cooling and solidification of the melt and the formation of segregation, as well as stresses and cracks have been the subject of numerous projects in which the phenomena were analyzed by various measurement techniques, calculations and/or analytical or numerical simulations. The motivation for these efforts was the desire to understand the details of the phenomena influencing the casting process performance and the strand quality, in order to be able to optimize the casting process conditions.
Today, the combination of newest developments in coupled 3D numerical heat and mass transport simulation coupled with computational optimization methods based on genetic algorithms allows new approaches to answering various questions that arise in continuous casting process optimization.
This contribution introduces a numerical simulation based optimization strategy, following rigorous thermodynamic and thermo mechanical models as well as a strictly methodic approach.
[...]