Abstract
Industrial trials conducted at Sidenor Basauri Works, and numerical modelling at Centro Sviluppo Materiali (CSM), have been combined in order to find a square 185 × 185 mm billet peripheral geometry that improves the quality of cast products by eliminating the occurrence of off corner cracks and depressions, and reducing the percentage of rejection. The idea is to change the square shape of the mould section to a new profile having a larger corner radius and outward bulging faces. Experimental trials using moulds with convex faces and larger corner radii resulted in an interesting decrease in the percentage of rejected bars. The presence of longitudinal defects has not been completely eliminated, but the adoption of moulds with larger corner radii has been demonstrated to be successful. Numerical modelling has been used to verify that the larger corner radius is the most important variable that guarantees the improved result, while it is less sensitive to different deflections of the faces. This encourages the use of moulds with flat faces, which produce billets that are much easier to handle with conventional tools for their transfer. It can be concluded that by using moulds with a corner radius of 40 mm, instead of conventional moulds with 10 mm corner radius, and flat faces, the risk of longitudinal off corner defects is significantly reduced.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.