Continuous Casting: Introduction

After secondary steelmaking, the molten steel is usually continuously cast via a tundish into a water-cooled copper mold causing a thin shell to solidify. This ‘strand’ is then withdrawn through a set of guiding rolls and further cooled by spraying with a fine water mist. The solidified shell continues to thicken until the strand is fully solidified. Finally, the strand is cut into desired lengths and these are either discharged to a storage area or to the hot rolling mill. A wide range of strand dimensions can be cast depending on final application: ‘slabs’ for flat products such as plate and strip, ‘blooms’ for sections such as beams, and ‘billets’ for long products such as wire. Techniques have also been developed to cast steel directly to thin strip (<3 mm thick) and cast strip is now available commercially.
Learning Outcomes for this Section

After completing this section, you should be able to:

    * Describe the main components and layout of slab, bloom and billet casters
    * Explain the functions of the tundish and mold
    * Explain the purpose of mold oscillation, and the effects of oscillation stroke, frequency and casting speed
    * Describe and sketch typical temperature profiles for the liquid steel in both ladle and tundish
    * Define the terms bulging, misalignment and bending/straightening strains and explain the main parameters that affect each
    * Successfully perform a 3-ladle sequence cast in a continuous casting simulation

http://www.steeluniversity.org/content/html/eng/default.asp?catid=27&pageid=2081271519

These are supplementary videos below:

http://www.matter.org.uk/steelmatter/casting/5_1_5_2_7.htm

http://www.matter.org.uk/steelmatter/casting/ingot.htm

http://www.matter.org.uk/steelmatter/casting/concast.htm

Don't forget to click the "next" button to view and digest the entire module! ;) ENJOY!!! :) :) :)

Respectfully,
Henry