Thermal optimization of secondary cooling systems in the continuous steel casting process

A new process design methodology for the cooling system in the continuous steel casting process is introduced. It is based on a semi-empirical approach for choosing the primary cooling zone design parameters and using an optimization-based method to decide on the design parameters corresponding to the secondary cooling zone. The heat flux through the secondary cooling zone is the design parameter in the latter case. Unlike former studies that considered a misfit temperature function as the objective function, it is defined here as the square of the temperature field penalized with the Niyama's criterion infeasibility to ensure the production of microporosity-free strands. This way, no information about the target temperature field is required in advance. The corresponding heat transfer problem is coupled to CALPHAD to consider commercial steel grades straightforwardly. An efficient gradient-based optimization algorithm is employed to find the optimal values of design parameters. Then, this algorithm is employed in an actual process design problem corresponding to the continuous slab casting of a commercial steel grade. A post-processing approach is suggested to convert the results of numerical optimization to industrially relevant machine parameters, and then they are exploited in practice in the foundry plant. While the optimization problem is only constrained to avoid solidification -induced defects, it produces sound and crack-free strands. Moreover, comparing numerical results to actual surface temperature measurements reveals more petite than a six percent discrepancy between the simulation and experiment. These observations illustrate the feasibility of the presented design methodology as the initial step in deciding on the cooling system parameters in this process.