Jonas

Aberg, Michael Vynnycky, Hasse Fredriksson

Modelling of thermal stresses in industrial continuous casting
processes
Abstract This paper reports on progress in the imple-
mentation of COMSOL Multiphysics 3.2 to model ther-
mal stresses in a three-dimensional solidifying shell, as
occurs typically in the industrial continuous casting of
copper, copper alloys and steel. Computer memory re-
quirements prohibit a direct 3D numerical simulation of
the temperature and the stresses. Instead, we use the fact
that casting geometries are usually slender to divide the
calculation into three steps that are each less memory-
intensive: (i) heat transfer and solidication is simulated
using an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian model; (ii) the
temperature solution is used to solve the force equilib-
rium equations in generalised plane strain mode appro-
priate for a moving body; (iii) this solution is used to
compute the accumulated stress and strain in the body.
Comparison between an analytical solution and a nu-
merical solution, that requires the simultaneous use of
several of Comsol Multiphysics peripheral features, is
presented.
1 Introduction
In industrial continuous casting processes, molten metal,
typically copper, aluminium and steel alloys, passes ver-
tically downwards through a cooled mold; subsequently,
a solidied shell forms adjacent to the mold walls and is
withdrawn at uniform speed. An idealized schematic of
such a process is given in Fig. 1, which shows a molten
region (within the inverted pyramid) surrounded by a so-
lidied metal shell that is pulled vertically downwards
with casting speed, V
cast
; in general, the mold walls which
surround the solidied shell(not shown here) are not in
the form of a square, neither are they necessarily vertical
[1].
The industrial importance of the process demands a
detailed understanding of the factors that inuence prod-
uct quality. Of key interest is the heat transfer that occurs
during solidication, since this is thought to be respon-
sible for the appearance of surface and half-way cracks
within the solidied shell [28]. As a result, a number of
J.

Aberg , KTH/Metallernas Gjutning
Brinellv. 23, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden
Tel.: +46-8-7906151
Fax: +46-8-216557
E-mail: jonasa@matpr.kth.se
Fig. 1 : Schematic of a casting process with a liquid interior (re-
gion within the inverted pyramid), a solid shell (region below the
pyramid) that is withdrawn vertically downwards with speed V
cast
attempts have been to compute the levels of thermally-
induced stresses and strains that develop in the solidify-
ing shell [914]. These works either simplify the prob-
lemto one dimension [911] or develop specially-designed
geometry-dependent code to solve the structural equilib-
rium equations to obtain the thermally-induced stresses
and strains in the shell [1214].
Here, we report on progress to employ Comsol Mul-
tiphysics 3.2 [15], to tackle this problem. The idea is to
couple the heat transfer and structural mechanics mod-
ules that exist by default in COMSOL Multiphysics, so
as to develop a numerical model that can be used for any
continuous casting process, irrespective of cross-section
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm
geometry. Computer memory requirements prohibit the
most obvious approach: a direct 3D numerical simula-
tion of the temperature and the stresses. Instead, we use
the fact that casting geometries are usually slender to di-
vide the calculation into three steps that are each less
memory-intensive:
heat transfer and solidication is simulated using an
arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian model;
the temperature solution is used to solve the force
equilibrium equations in generalized plane strain, al-
beit modied to take account of the translational mo-
tion of the solidied shell;
this solution is used to compute the accumulated stress
and strain in the shell.
A benchmark comparison between an analytical so-
lution and a numerical solution, that requires the simulta-
neous use of several of Comsol Multiphysics peripheral
features, is presented.
2 Problem formulation
We assume a steady state problem. Most generally, the
temperature and stress components would have to be com-
puted simultaneously; for the benchmarking we will per-
form here, however, we will assume that the thermal and
structure mechanical problems decouple, so that the tem-
perature distribution can computed rst, and is then used
as input to the stress calculations. We consider here the
solidication of a pure metal, and assume that the molten
metal streams uniformly downwards with the same speed
as the solidifying shell, i.e. V
cast
.
Fig. 2 : Cross-section of a casting geometry
A detailed derivation of the relevant heat transfer and
force equilibrium(Navier) equations are given by Jablonka
[12] and Schwerdtfeger et al. [13]; it is their mathemat-
ical formulation in generalized plane strain mode for a
steady-state continuous casting process that we imple-
ment, although without their restriction to axisymmetric
geometries. Mathematically, the most general situation
is equivalent to that shown in Figure 2, which shows the
solidication front advancing as a function of t, where
t = z/V
cast
.
For heat transfer, we have
C
ps
T
s
t
= k
s
_

2
T
s
x
2
+

2
T
s
y
2
_
in the solid,
C
pl
T
l
z
= k
l
_

2
T
l
x
2
+

2
T
l
y
2
_
in the liquid,
where k
s
and k
l
are the thermal conductivities of solid
and liquid metal, respectively, c
ps
and c
pl
are the specic
heat capacities of solid and liquid, respectively, is the
density, and H
f
is the latent heat of fusion; we give the
boundary condition associated with the release of latent
heat at the solidication front later.
Stresses will occur only within the solidied shell.
There, the force equilibrium equations are given, in gen-
eralized plane strain mode, for the stress components

x
,
y
,
xy
by

x
x
+

xy
y
= 0, (1)

xy
x
+

y
y
= 0, (2)
where the dots here denote differentiation with respect to
t. Further,
x
,
y
,
z
are related to the strain components,

x
,
y
and
z
, and the temperature T by
_
_

x

y

z
_
_
=
E
(1+)(12)
_
_
1
1
1
_
_
_
_

x

y

z
_
_

E

T
(12)
_
_
1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1
_
_
,
where E is the Youngs modulus, is the Poisson ra-
tio and is the thermal expansion coefcient, and the
strain components are in turn related to the displace-
ments, u, v, w, by

x
=
u
x
,
y
=
v
y
,
z
=
w
z
.
Furthermore, compatibility conditions would give that, if
the cross-section of the casting geometry does not pos-
sess symmetry in either x or y, then
z
must be of the
form

z
= a(t) +b(t)x +c(t)y, (3)
where a(t), b(t), c(t) are functions to be determined; this
is consistent with the situation in [13] for radially sym-
metric casting, where (3) reduces simply to
z
= a(t).
For the purposes of benchmarking, we consider, in-
stead of the geometry in Figure 2, a problemthat is known
to have an analytical solution for which
z
= a(t); the
geometry and relevant boundary conditions are summa-
rized in Figures 3 and 4. In particular, Figure 4 contains
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm
Fig. 3 : Boundary conditions for heat transfer
Fig. 4 : Boundary conditions for structure mechanics
two conditions that have genuine physical relevance in
continuous casting: v = 0 at y = 0 expresses the fact that
there is direct contact between the shell and the mold,and
therefore that there is no normal displacement of the shell
surface, whilst
y
= 0 at the solidication front comes
from the fact that the metallostatic pressure will be much
smaller than the induced thermal stresses; and six others
that are necessary for an analytical solution.
These boundary conditions will not sufce, however,
to determine a(t), and therefore additional considera-
tions are required. A further condition results from the
fact that
z
has to be compensated by the total external
force, F
z
, acting on the cross-sectional area, i.e.
F
z
=
_
y
c
(t)
0

z
dy.
Different assumptions can be made to obtain F
z
; this is
discussed briey for the continuous casting of steel by
Schwerdtfeger et al. [13]. In the mold region, F
z
will
equal the weight of the steel column above the cross sec-
tional area of the shell if the friction within the mold is
negligible and the strand is held by the guiding system
below the mold, i.e. the slice of the shell is subjected to
an overall compression. In principle, there can also be
overall longitudinal tension in the shell with positive F
z
,
exerted by the withdrawal machine, if the friction in the
mold is large. If friction and weight force compensate
each other, F
z
= 0, so that
_
y
c
(t)
0

z
dy = 0, (4)
which then becomes
_
y
c
(t)
0

z
dy = 0. (5)
3 Numerical modelling in COMSOL Multiphysics
A rst approach was to use a common domain for both
solid and liquid phases, with a source term for the heat
equation to describe the release of latent heat at the so-
lidication front [16], and a further source term for the
t-derived Naviers equation in order to numerically damp
out all stresses in the liquid phase. This method suffers
from several drawbacks:
a ne mesh is required throughout the solution do-
main in order to resolve the release of latent heat at
the melting temperature;
whilst a ne mesh gave good agreement with the an-
alytical solution for the temperature, T, it proved ex-
ceedingly difcult to obtain an oscillation-free pro-
le for

T, which then led to oscillations in the pro-
les for the stress components.
Consequently, we opted to implement the arbitrary
Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method as described in the
COMSOL Multiphysics 3.2 documentation. With refer-
ence to Figure 3, this method tracks the solid-liquid in-
terface; all computations for heat transfer are performed
on this domain and additional PDEs are solved for the
deformed mesh. Furthermore, the structure mechanical
calculations can be switched off in the liquid region, so
that there is no need for ad hoc damping terms there.
Consequently, the problem can be solved accurately and
without numerical oscillations using several hundred el-
ements in a few minutes; this compares with the tens of
thousands of elements and several hours that are required
when using the approach with sources.
On top of the ALE framework, the coupling between
heat transfer and structure mechanics that exists within
Comsol Multiphysics still has to be extended in several
ways in order to solve continuous casting problems:
(a) The Navier equations are normally for the stress com-
ponents in a stationary body; in continuous casting,
the solid body is translating with a casting speed,
and so the Navier equations in this case are for the
derivatives, with respect to the direction of casting,
of the stress components. Once these are determined
by COMSOL Multiphysics, they must be integrated,
with respect to that direction, back to the initial point
of solidication to determine the actual stress com-
ponents at a particular point in space; this is illus-
trated in Fig. 1.
(b) By default, COMSOL Multiphysics has only an in-
built plane strain approximation mode, and further
programming is required to extend this to the gen-
eralized plane strain case. With this approximation,
a 3D steady-state casting problem can be reformu-
lated as a 2D time-dependent problem, an approach
that alleviates computer memory requirements, since
the problem can be solved numerically z-plane by z-
plane, rather than for the whole 3D geometry at once.
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm
(c) The ODE settings option is used to compute
z
.
The solution algorithm therefore consists of the fol-
lowing steps:
1. Solve for the temperature, T.
2. Solve for
x
,
y
,
xy
under the generalized plane strain
approximation and ODE settings in each consecutive
z-plane.
3. Find the actual stress components, i.e.
x
,
y
,
z
,
xy
at a particular point (x, y, z) in space, by integrating

x
,
y
,
z
and
xy
vertically back to the initial point
of solidication, as shown in Fig. 1, i.e.
(x, y, z) =
_
z
z
c
(y)

_
x, y, z

_
dz

, (6)
or alternatively
(x, y, t) =
_
t
t
c
(y)

_
x, y, t

_
dt

(7)
where =
x
,
y
,
z
,
xy
.
4 Results
The analytical solution for the temperature is that for a
classical 1D time-dependent Stefan problem involving
a mold wall at constant cooling temperature, T
mold
, and
semi-innite pure melt that is initially at a temperature,
T
cast
, higher than the melting temperature, T
melt
. The so-
lution for the temperature is then given by
T (y, t) =
_

_
T
mold
+(T
melt
T
mold
)
erf
_
y
2

st
_
erf()
if 0 < y < y
c
(t),
T
cast
+(T
melt
T
cast
)
erfc
_
y
2

l
t
_
erfc(
_
s

l
_1
2
)
if y > y
c
(t),
where y
c
(t) = 2

s
t,
s
= k
s
/c
ps
,
l
= k
l
/c
pl
and
is given by the solution to
exp
_

2
_
erf()

k
l

s
(T
cast
T
melt
)exp(
2
_

l
_
)
k
s

l
(T
melt
T
mold
)erfc(
_

l
_1
2
)
=
H
f

c
ps
(T
melt
T
mold
)
.
This solution indicates that initially the thickness of
the solid region will be zero; to circumvent this dif-
culty, we started the computations at t = t
init
> 0. For
the results we present here, we have taken t
init
= 0.1 s;
solutions were also obtained for much smaller values of
t
init
. A comparison of analytical and numerical solutions
at t = 1.5 s and 3 s is given in Figure 5; here, we have
used T
mold
= 1000 K, T
melt
= 1356 K and T
cast
= 1393
K, and the values for the physical parameters are those
Fig. 5 : T as a function of y
Fig. 6 :

T as a function of y
of pure copper. Furthermore, Figure 6 compares

T; ev-
ident here is how the numerical solution is able to re-
capture the jump discontinuity in

T at the solidication
front. Note incidentally that, in both gures, the ana-
lytical solution, which is valid for solidication into an
semi-innite medium, begins to differ from the numeri-
cal solution at t = 3 s.
The stress eld for this case, when a linear elastic
model is used, appears not to be given in literature (not
even by Weiner and Boley [9], whose solution is for an
elastic-plastic model); thus, we have had to derive it from
scratch, and for future use we note here that

x
=
z
=
E
(1)
_
1
y
c
(t)
_
y
c
(t)
0

Tdy

T
_
,

y
0,
and

z
=
x
=

y
c
(t)
_
y
c
(t)
0

Tdy,

y
=

1
_
(1+)

T
2
y
c
(t)
_
y
c
(t)
0

Tdy
_
.
Implementing t
c
(y) = y
2
/4
2

s
in equation (6), we -
nally arrive at

z
(x, y, z) =
E
1
_
(T
melt
T
mold
)
4

erf
_
1exp
_

2
__

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm
log
_
y
2
_

s
z/V
cast
_

_
T
_
y,
z
V
cast
_
T
melt
_
_
.
Fig. 7 :
z
as a function of y
The development of
z
with t is given in Fig. 7. Fur-
thermore, Fig. 8 gives the
z
-prole as a function of t,
which, for this simplied geometry, will not depend on
x and y, and is given by

z
=
(T
melt
T
mold
)
2

t erf
_
1exp
_

2
__
. (8)
In all cases, the agreement between the analytical and
numerical solutions is very good.
Fig. 8 :
z
as a function of t
5 Conclusions
We have reported on progress in the implementation of
Comsol Multiphysics 3.2 to compute thermal cracks in
industrial continuous casting. The most practical way to
solve the benchmark example chosen was found to be to
use an ALE model, combined with the generalized plane
strain mode and the ODE Settings option, in order to
satisfy an integral constraint that the solution must full.
Immediate and obvious extensions are: (i) non-planar
solidication fronts, as occur in actual continuous cast-
ing processes; (ii) metal alloys, where the ALE-approach
should be applied twice: once at the solidus isotherm,
and once at the liquidus isotherm; (iii) more realistic
stress-strain constitutive relations. Work on these is in
progress.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Elektrokop-
par, Outokumpu, Jernkontoret and VINNOVA for nancial sup-
port, and Comsol AB for assistance with certain aspects of the nu-
merics. This work has been performed, in part, within the frame-
work of the Fax en Laboratory.
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Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm