Evolution of Temperature Field of Slabs during the Feeding Strip Process in Continuous Casting

Abstract

The implementation of a feeding strip is a widely recognized and effective technique to improve the quality of continuous cast slabs. To comprehensively understand the effect of feeding strip on the temperature field of slabs during continuous casting, a mathematical model is developed that considers the breaking and shedding of strip, and, the accuracy of the developed model is verified by the macroscopic structural observations of S32654 steel ingot. During the feeding strip process, changes in the morphology of strip undergo four stages: frozen‐sheath formation, rapid melting, alternation of melting and solidification, and disappearance. Its corresponding cross‐sectional area rapidly increases to a maximum, sharply decreases, oscillates, and eventually reaches zero. The feeding strip effectively mitigates the impingement of jet onto the narrow surfaces of the slab by compressing “lower recirculation” and dividing “upper recirculation” of molten steel near submerged entry nozzle, especially at higher feeding strip velocities. Furthermore, there exists the additional cooling effect region of strip feeding in the temperature field of slab, which is caused by the melting of strip and molten/shedded‐strip flow. As feeding strip velocity increases, the cooling effect region moves correspondingly from the vicinity of the narrow surfaces of the slab to the center of slab.