9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

In the initial secondary cooling zones for the radial slab caster it is necessarily to keep the following conditions: set the hard cooling to remove a large amount of heat when keeping the cooling uniformity to avoid overcooled corners. In these days the problem how to satisfy these requirements is handled by using more cooling nozzles in the one line with water overlapping areas. This paper shows a set of experiments performed for the investigation of cooling behavior in the overlapping areas. The data obtained from the experiments are used as boundary conditions in the 3D solidification model. The numerical model shows that the uniform water distribution or uniform impact pressure does not guarantee uniform surface temperature field. In the beginning of the secondary cooling zone in the case when Leidenfrost temperature is exceeded and temperature locally intensively dropped the surface, then the defects can occur. The results of mathematical modelling and experimental measurements are generalized for an optimal design of the initial secondary cooling zone with more cooling nozzles in one line. The different cooling behavior on large and thin slab cross-section is also demonstrating.