Electromagnetic Induction Tomography for Monitoring Liquid Metal Flow During Continuous Casting

Abstract

Monitoring of the steel flow through the submerged entry nozzle (SEN) during continuous casting presents a challenge for the instrumentation system because of the high temperature environment and the limited access to the nozzle in between the tundish and the mould. In this paper, we describe the development of electromagnetic instrumentation as a new tool to visualize the steel flow profile within the SEN. The presentation will cover the development of the technique from first principles, initial hot tests to subsequent plant tests. Recent work has focussed on experiments on a scaled (approx. 10:1) laboratory model of the continuous casting process. The experiments were performed with argon gas and GaInSn as an analogue for liquid steel, which has similar conductive properties as molten steel and allows the measurements at room temperature. In this work two inductive imaging techniques have been combined for the first time to simultaneously image the two phase distribution in the SEN and the velocity profile in the mould