Modeling of the interfacial heat flow in a single-belt
casting simulator

Abstract: Strip casting is a common, low-cost method to cast thin aluminum sheets at
gauges close to the final product gauge. Since this process involves fewer
steps than traditionally casting methods, the manufacturing time for
aluminum products is reduced considerably. Usually, when surface defects
occur during the casting process, the slab is scalped. Since it is
impractical to scalp a sheet, the slab should contain a minimal amount of
surface defects. To achieve this, it is important to understand the effect
of different processing variables that occur in the casting procedure.

The use of a pilot-scale belt-caster for research is expensive, and
therefore, a single-belt casting simulator has been constructed. The aim is
to study a broad range of casting conditions and the parameters that affect
the surface quality and the underlying microstructure in the twin-belt
casting process. Running experiments on the simulator also reduces the costs
considerably compared to full scale twin-belt casting experiments.

To achieve a sensible simulation, the conditions should be as identical as
possible to a twin-belt caster. One of the most crucial factors is the heat-
flow occurring in the interface between the solidifying metal and its
surroundings. This flow is hard to measure. Therefore, a model for
interfacial flow calculations was created.

The model was developed in Matlab and Abaqus/CAE. Abaqus/CAE could not
compute the desired heat-flow automatically, but was used as a control
device for the created algorithm. It was showed that the accuracy of the
heat-flow computed with the Matlab algorithm was good.