8th International Congress on Science and Technology of Ironmaking - ICSTI 2018

Copper staves are used in blast furnaces to protect the steel shell from process heat loads. Staves have experienced premature failures such as cracks, broken water pipes/water leakage, and abrasion related wear. Relationships between copper stave failure and stave deformation have been reported in literature. A detailed assessment methodology is presented to estimate the thermomechanical bending in a copper stave. This approach incorporates temperature-dependent copper properties, such as creep and plasticity to more accurately capture stave deformation under transient and cyclic thermal loading. The resulting deformations are compared with commonly reported stave failures. Improvements to stave design and the related anchoring system can be assessed using the assessment methodology presented.