Thin steel section casting on a near-horizontal twin-belt caster

摘要

As part of a program to develop a high productivity casting process for thin steel sections for direct hot rolling into high quality sheet, a process was devised where a closed-pool injection feeding system was coupled with a Hazelett twin-belt casting machine. Pilot facilities were built to determine the feasibility of closed-pool feeding. The facility was designed to cast up to 13.5 tonnes of steel into 25-mm thick and 430-mm wide steel sections at rates ranging from 4 to 15 m/min. Closed-pool feeding was attained in parts of seven casts. Under certain casting conditions, closed-pool feeding resulted in improvement in strand surface quality over open-pool feeding. However in nearly all cases of closed-pool feeding, the casts had to be terminated prematurely due to feeding nozzle breakage. This failure appears to be caused by frequent steel skull formation on, and subsequent detachment from the nozzle tip. In general, horizontal thin sections casting of steel with closed-pool feeding is a very complicated technology which is extremely labor and and material intensive, and not deemed economically viable. 4 refs., 15 figs. (ERA citation 16:000822)