Mathematics

In continuous casting of steel, the most critical component is the mold. In the mold, the steel begins its solidification, and several complex physical phenomena happen. To ensure a proper control of the process, it is necessary to know how the steel is behaving inside the mold. However, it is not possible to make measurements inside the solidifying steel and the only available data are pointwise temperature measurements in the interior of the mold plates. To provide a tool for the proper control of the process, we developed  a methodology  for the  real-time estimation  of the  heat flux  at the  steel-mold  interface given the temperature measurements. With this tool, we allow the caster operator to quickly detect any malfunctioning in the casting increasing the safety and the productivity of continuous casters