A tundish upper nozzle structure and a continuous casting method make it possible to cause inclusions to float within a tundish. A flange-shaped member having an outside dimension greater than that of an upper end of a tundish upper nozzle is provided along a part or the entirety of the circumference of the upper end of the tundish upper nozzle, and one or more gas discharge holes are provided in one or more of the following surfaces: a lower surface, an outer peripheral surface and a top surface of the flange-shaped member, and a region of an outer peripheral surface of the tundish upper nozzle below the flange-shaped member. A length in the tundish upper nozzle structure is adjusted to cause almost all gas to float upwardly, or to adjust the flow rate of gas flowing downwardly toward the inner bore of the tundish upper nozzle, and the flow rate of gas floating upwardly.

Systems and associated methods are provided for controlling the shape of an ingot head during formation. At the end of a cast, prior to forming the ingot head, chill bars or other cooling structure may be lowered into an ingot mold and define a reduced casting footprint for forming the ingot head. Supplemental molten metal may be fed into the reduced casting footprint, and the chill bars may be moved laterally towards the center of the ingot, further reducing the casting footprint. As additional molten metal fills the reduced mold footprint, the ingot may be lowered relative to the chill bars to further increase the height of the ingot head. Additional molten metal may be added until the desired shape of the ingot head is formed.

The present disclosure addresses the technical problem of prediction of a preheat refractory temperature profile of a ladle furnace. Operational temperature of the ladle furnace, stability of sensors and placement make sensors not feasible. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations require large computation time and cannot be used for runtime applications in plants. The method and system of the present disclosure uses CFD modeling to carry out parametric study to generate data which is further processed to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model that serves as a prediction model for predicting the preheat refractory temperature profile for at least a portion of the side refractory and at least a portion of the bottom refractory layer separately for which a new set of input data is obtained. The trained prediction model of the present disclosure provides a quick runtime prediction in plants.

A method for maintaining the optimal argon injection flow rate which will result in production of steel slab of a chosen alloy having optimal cleanliness. The steel is cast using an argon injected slide gate. The selected steel has a known optimal argon injection flow rate Qb* for casting steel of optimal cleanliness. The method involves calculating the present steel pressure and determining the present injection flow rate conductance Gb′ of the argon injected slide gate during either of 1) a steel pressure change event; or 2) an argon flow change event. The measurements are used to calculate present argon pressure required to insure the required injection flow rate of argon into the steel for optimal cleanliness of the cast steel.

A slab continuous casting apparatus according to this invention is configured to supply molten metal from a tundish to a slab water-cooled mold through at least an upper nozzle, a stopper, and an immersion nozzle and solidify the molten metal, and is provided with an immersion nozzle quick replacement mechanism. The slab continuous casting apparatus includes a discharge direction change mechanism that is provided between the stopper and the immersion nozzle and is capable of freely changing a discharge angle of the molten metal in a horizontal cross-section during casting.

A strip casting system for aluminium and/or aluminium alloys comprising a casting furnace and a revolving chill mould having a casting gap. The revolving chill mould is designed as a roll pair, roller pair, caterpillar pair or belt pair. The strip casting system has an active means for transporting metal melt from the casting furnace to the casting gap and a casting region arranged in front of the casting gap. The casting region is delimited on one side by the revolving chill mould. A melt pool is formed in the casting region, from which metal melt flows or is drawn into the casting gap. The casting furnace is connected to the casting region by a pipe system with means for feeding the metal melt into the casting region, which can feed the metal melt to the casting region below the surface of the melt pool formed in the casting region.

A strip casting system for aluminium and/or aluminium alloys comprising a casting furnace and a revolving chill mould having a casting gap. The revolving chill mould is designed as a roll pair, roller pair, caterpillar pair or belt pair. The strip casting system has an active means for transporting metal melt from the casting furnace to the casting gap and a casting region arranged in front of the casting gap. The casting region is delimited on one side by the revolving chill mould. A melt pool is formed in the casting region, from which metal melt flows or is drawn into the casting gap. The casting furnace is connected to the casting region by a pipe system with means for feeding the metal melt into the casting region, which can feed the metal melt to the casting region below the surface of the melt pool formed in the casting region.

A method of producing molten aluminum-lithium alloys for casting a feedstock in the form of an ingot, the method including the steps of: preparing a molten first aluminum alloy with a composition A which is free from lithium as purposive alloying element, transferring the first aluminum alloy to an induction melting furnace, adding lithium to the first aluminum alloy in the induction melting furnace to obtain a molten second aluminum alloy with a composition B having lithium as purposive alloying element, optionally adding further alloying elements to the second aluminum alloy, transferring the second alloy via a metal conveying trough from the induction melting furnace to a casting station.

A liquid metal jet supplying molten metal during a direct chill casting operation can be optimized to erode the slurry region of the molten sump, but not the solidified metal, at a rate equal to the casting speed. A model of the erosion of solidifying grains in the slurry region of the molten sump can be non-dimensionalized to be used to generate casting parameters (e.g., optimally sized nozzle openings and optimal molten metal flow rates) that would provide the optimized liquid metal jet during the casting process. An ingot cast using such an optimized liquid metal jet would have improved macrosegregation properties (e.g., reduced macrosegregation or more evenly distributed macrosegregation), such as having ingot solute concentrations varying from the molten metal supply concentration approximately 10% or less or 5% or less across the width or height of the ingot.

A manufacturing method for a cast bar and tube made of a magnesium alloy, includes steps of preparing a manufacturing device; depressurizing a vacuum chamber through a depressurization device; heating a vicinity of an opening of a hollow tube; inserting the opening of the hollow tube into a molten metal; switching a valve member to be open; introducing the molten metal into a cylindrical part, and filling the cylindrical part with the molten metal; cooling the hollow tube; and continuously vibrating the hollow tube until completing solidification of the molten metal in the cylindrical part.