Method for Determining the Boundary Condition of Heat Transfer in Mold for Slab Casting

The calculation of temperature field in the mold is important for the study of solidification process of liquid steel. In order to calculate the accurate temperature field of slab in the mod, the boundary condition of heat transfer in the mold should be determined before the calculation of slab temperature. In this paper, the relationship among the average heat transfer coefficient in the mold, the physical properties of steel, the cast condition and the cooling condition is derived according to the energy conservation equation and the Fourier law of heat conduction. Furthermore, the method for determining the parameters related to the formula of boundary heat flux is introduced. Results indicate that the average heat transfer coefficient in the mold ranges from 450 to 2000 W·(m2oC)−1 for conventional caster with a casting speed ranging from 0.8 and 1.8 m·min-1. The average heat transfer coefficient increases with the increase of casting speed. Besides, the casting speed has an effect on the parameters in the formula of calculating boundary heat flux, which indicates that the casting speed and the cooling condition should be taken into consideration for determining parameters related to the formula of calculating surface heat flux in the mold.

A study on fabrication of nanocomposite polyethylene foam through extrusion foaming procedure

Foaming a polymer not only turns it into a lightweight material but also gives some special properties to it. However, the most important issue is controlling the foaming process to achieve a desirable structure with high cell density and low relative density. In the present study, the extrusion foaming process of polyethylene was studied through stepwise amendments. An innovative extrusion system was designed and implemented to produce extrusion foams under different material and process conditions using N2 as blowing agent. In the first step, the final cooling condition was investigated. The air-cooling condition led to a higher cell density/lower cell size compared to the water-cooling condition although a higher relative density was obtained. In the second step, the effects of the addition of talc and the synergetic effect of talc/nanoclay at different contents were investigated in detail. The hybrid of talc/nanoclay had a noticeably improving effect on the cellular structure. In the third step, the effects of processing parameters including the die temperature and screw speed were studied on the foam properties. Finally, up to 49.4% decrease in the relative density of samples was observed, also cell densities up to 2.5 × 104 cell/cm3 and cell sizes as small as 280 µm were achieved.

Effects of Water Jet Height and End Dipping on the Cooling Rate and Hardenability in the Jominy End Quench Test

The effects of water jet height and end dipping on cooling rate and hardenability in the Jominy end quench test were investigated to understand the Jominy test in more detail. Experimental tests were conducted under end dipping cooling condition as well as for specific water jet heights of 35, 65, and 100 mm. The thermal behavior and mechanical properties of the Jominy specimen with region were evaluated using thermocouples and hardness measurements, respectively. The effect of the water jet height on the thermal and hardness behaviors was not large; especially, the influence of water jet height was negligible when the water jet height was over 50 mm. These observations indicate that the uncertainty of the water jet height is not important during the standard Jominy end quench test. Meanwhile, during the standard Jominy test, we cannot neglect the heat flow along the radial direction of the specimen because the temperature difference between the center and surface area was not small; the maximum temperature difference was approximately 50 °C. Based on the comparative study between the standard Jominy cooling and the end dipping cooling processes, the thermal gradient along the radial direction of the specimen can be reduced with the more stable cooling condition on the Jominy end. However, the effect of temperature deviation along the radial direction of the Jominy specimen on the hardness distribution along the longitudinal direction was not large, which shows the high reliability of the Jominy end quench test.