9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

Flows in CC mould are a key parameter to control products quality. Mould Flow Monitoring (MFM) is a solution developed by Amepa Company. It is an electromagnetic technique using sensors implemented behind the copper plate of the mould which consist in permanent magnets and several highly sensitive detectors without direct steel contact. These sensors are able to measure the velocity of liquid steel close to the solidifying shell.The basic measurement principle is a time-of-flight measurement, using the correlation method by calculating the flight time of a velocity perturbation. Assessment of this technique is done thanks to Submeniscus Velocity Control (SVC) sensors developed by ArcelorMittal Maizières R&D. This second technique is based on the use of refractory probe immerged in liquid steel in mould at meniscus which in fact measures torque converted into velocity. The 2 techniques are compared under different casting conditions in an ArcelorMittal steelplant and the agreement between both measurements is very satisfactory. In a second step, Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations applied on the same casting conditions, confirm the correspondence between MFM location, close to the solidified shell, and SVC one, at meniscus, in terms of velocity generated in the mould. All of these agreements confirm that MFM solution is able to measure flows in mould without any contact with liquid steel and without any intervention from operators.