Abstract: Aimed at the problem of complicated production organization and high cost of continuous casting, which is due to multiproduct and small batch of high performance steels in CSP plant of Wuhan Iron and Steel Co.,Ltd. Length of the transition slab during the CSP casting was investigated by hydraulic modelling and pilot trials. The used water model was in a proportion of 1∶2 to simulate the industrial tundish with a capacity of 45 t. During the simulation, the conditions satisfied the Froude number similarity principle. Important factors which affect the flow and mixing of liquid steel were taken into account, including the casting speed and the weight of residual molten steel in tundish. As a result, concentration curves along the casting direction were analyzed and obtained. It was found that the minimum length of the intermixing slab was about 22.4m when the residual molten steel and casting speed were about 10 t and 4.5m/min, respectively. Hereafter, industrial trials were carried out, which agreed with the obtained results in the cold model simulation. After application, the problem of complicated production organization, which is due to multiproduct and small batch of high, was be relieved. Productivity of high performance steels was increased and the cost was effectively reduced in CSP plant.

Key words: CSP, continuous casting tundish, hydraulic model, grades transition process