9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

The dynamic soft reduction is more and more applied in bloom casting to improve internal soundness for long products, aiming to achieve consistent and reliable results in reducing V-shape segregation and central porosity. Soft Reduction for Round sections represents a new step ahead in CCM development, requiring a new concept for application to be effective, considering the “shape factor” of round sections. An innovative approach in the design of the modules for Soft Reduction equipped with multiple rolls has been conceived for substantial reduction in the central area of the bloom, being really effective to reduce the segregation. Actual casting tests have been carried out in a revamped strand with new modules and first results in bloom quality shows actual relevant improvements in internal quality. This new concept in Soft Reduction follows the long lasting experience of Danieli CentroMet in this field, casting large and medium bloom sections particularly for High Carbon and Stainless grades in several CCM. Tailor-made solution in powerful equipment driven fully automatically by a mathematical LPC-3Q model allowed further improving in quality for bloom quality. In this paper engineering solutions and quality results of Dynamic Soft Reduction for Round sections are exposed, together with recent quality achievements in stainless and HC grades for bloom rectangular sections. Keywords: Continuous Casting, Carbon Segregation, Porosity, Dynamic Mechanical Soft Reduction, Round sections casting, Rail Steel, Stainless Steel