MSE Graduate Seminar: Hybrid Models for Steelmaking and Casting Applications

Steel production involves a series of processes that convert iron and steel scrap into end products for industrial application. Over the past decade, steelmaking industry has faced continuous economic and environmental challenges. As a result, for fulfilling the steel product quality requirement and ensuring maximized process efficiency, strict monitoring for the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) and continuous casting processes is needed.

During the continuous casting process, the clogging of submerged entry nozzle (SEN) is a critical issue that adversely affects final product quality and process productivity. In order to impose effective monitoring and control over the continuous casting process, a quantitative index was formulated to quantify the magnitude of SEN clogging and erosion for ultra-low carbon, low carbon, medium carbon, and calcium treated grades. Three critical index values are defined to represent the clogging event, erosion event, and critical casting condition. Long short-term memory network was established based on the quantitative index in the past four minutes to predict that in the future 48 seconds. The models can identify most of the critical casting conditions and erosion incidents for all steel grades. In the production setting, operators can take corresponding actions when critical conditions are predicted in order to prevent the possible occurrence of clogging.