Iron and Steel Division - Effect of the Rate of Rise of Rimming Steel in Molds on the Surface Quality of Slabs

DURING an investigation concerning the use of large nozzles for pouring of low-carbon rimming steels, the practical details of which were reported elsewhere, it was noticed that increases of nozzle sizes were generally followed by improvements of slab surface quality. It is the purpose of this note to present the data available and some tentative opinions about this phenomenon. The problem of correlating pouring rates with the metallurgical performance of steels is complicated by several factors. The two most important are; 1) Variations of the steel pouring rate throughout a pour, these being due to the nozzle erosion, which enlarges the bore area, and the dropping ferrostatic pressure in the ladle. The pouring rate is lowest towards the end of a heat when the ladle is nearly empty. 2) Variations in the ingot pouring time due to the different ingot weights poured. Consequently, the use of the average pouring rate of a heat may not be exact, but in large-scale production it is not practical to treat ingots separately according to their pouring rates. The variations of ingot weights and sizes may be overcome by considering the rate of rise of steel in the mold. Hence, the average rate of filling of molds throughout the pour of a heat, inches per second, will be used in this note. Every ingot rolled at Inland is rated at the blooming mills prior to hot machine scarfing as being good, fair, or poor for cracks, scabs, and checking. The latter term refers to the network of breaks or lines associated with overheating or burning in the soaking pits. It is also known that thin-skinned steel is prone to show this defect if the subsurface blowholes are exposed during reheating or rolling. The experiences with the surface quality of slabs rolled from ingots poured at different rates are presented in Fig. 1. The data represent nearly 11,000 ingots. It appears that all three types of defects are in-