Process control by advanced thermal mould monitoring at a continuous slab caster

To produce crackfree slab surfaces it is important to have a uniform transfer of heat from the strand. Krupp Hoesch Stahl AG has installed a measuring system at its continuous easter in Dortmund that monitors the transfer of heat through the strand shell to the mould. The measured heat flux densities are registered and stored in a Local Area Network (LAN) corn prising personal computers. A new visualisation programme makes it possible to correlate the casting conditions and transfer of heat in the mould. Software for longitudinal crack detection has additionally been developed and tested on peritectically solidifying qualities. In a first trial campaign involving peritec slab dualities, the system already identified some 79% of the longitudinal cracks detected on the slabs during surface Inspection.