Development of Universal Mould Geometry for the Teeming of Cylindrical Iron-Base Alloy Ingots

The presented work is aimed at developing a mould geometry suitable for casting both low- and high-alloy steel grades into 500 kg experimental ingots. The high Height-to-Diameter (H/D)-ratio mould currently used in COMTES FHT Inc. served as a reference and for finite element method simulations (FEM) of the filling and solidification process. The optimized mould geometry, balancing the porosity and segregations, was determined using MAGMA software. Four different steel grades were defined for the simulation. Case studies were carried out for 34CrNiMo6 (W.Nr. 1.6582), DHQ8, CB2 and borated stainless steel grades ranging from low-alloy steel to high-alloy steel. Extended user-defined criteria and verified boundary conditions were used to predict the formation of A-segregations in cast steel. Both primary (PDAS) and secondary (SDAS) arm spacings were modelled as well. The optimized mould shape and the casting assembly were designed based on the simulation results.