Open Access Conference Proceedings

Cooling in the continuous steel casting process starts within the primary cooling zone. Controlling the amount of water flowing through the mould cooling system allows the shell thickness growth to be directly controlled. Depending on the continuous casting machine type, the secondary cooling zone is divided into a few spray sub-zones. The cooling intensity monitoring within the secondary cooling zone is more and more often related to the strand surface temperature measurement in the cooling chamber. This measurement is performed on the basis of modern systems using optical pyrometers. In this paper, the authors present the method of strand surface temperature measurement in the cooling chamber using optical pyrometers. In addition, the solidifying strand surface temperature was monitored with a thermovision camera, and direct measurements were performed with a contact thermocouple - immediately after the strand had left the secondary cooling chamber. The experiments were carried out in industrial conditions at ArcelorMittal Poland S.A. Unit in Dąbrowa Górnicza, on a six-strand machine for casting billets. The measurements covered a sequence comprising five heats of a high carbon steel grade, dimensions 160x160 mm. The authors used a proprietary measurement method presented in the awarded patent: PL 225107 B1 „Method of a continuous temperature measurement at any point of a wide area of the strand after falling off the solidified mould slag in the secondary cooling chamber of a machine for the continuous casting of flat ingots during the entire casting sequence”.

Keywords: continuous casting, high carbon steel, temperature measurement, optical pyrometer, thermal imaging camera

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