Estimation of surface heat flux in continuous casting mould with limited measurement of temperature

Continuous casting mould is exposed to high heat flux due to its contact with the hot molten metal. The state of heat transfer in a mould and steel solidification depends on the magnitude of the mould boundary heat flux. In the present study, a mathematical model is developed to determine the heat flux across the hot surface of continuous casting mould from limited temperature measurement. The model is based on two-dimensional inverse heat transfer technique that was solved using the conjugate gradient method. Direct problem which involves two-dimensional conduction in the mould is first solved and validated. The inverse problem was tested by using the simulated temperature data obtained from the solution of a direct problem, where good agreement between the actual and estimated boundary heat flux is found. The Gaussian noises are added to the simulated temperatures to mimic the temperature measurement errors for testing anti-noise ability of the inverse problem model. Further, boundary heat flux is also estimated for a continuous casting mould using actually measured plant data. The model is applied to three test cases with temperature data obtained under different operating conditions and the results are analyzed. It has been observed that the proposed methodology results in accurate boundary heat flux estimation. Higher boundary heat flux are obtained for cases with higher casting speed as compared to cases with lower casting speed.