Research On Measuring Method Of Installation Quality Of Thermocouples On Mould Of Continuous Casters

Reliable temperature data is an important parameter that serves in on-line control and technology optimization and off-line numerical simulations of billet/mould in continuous casting production. Under hard work environment, there may exist dust between thermocouples and mould and thermocouples may be loose or detach from mould. So the temperature data may be inexact and the incorrect data misleads the prediction system to disturb the production. An effective measuring method of thermocouples' installation quality is necessary to guarantee the precision of temperature data.To resolve the problems mentioned above, a set of off-line measuring method for installation quality is put forward like this: a heater is invented to heat the mould, temperature data is acquired by thermocouples embedded in mould, installation quality is measured by analyzing the difference among thermocouples' temperature data. At the same time, installation state can be measured and a set of hard and software system including a special heater is build up to realize the measuring method.According to the way by which the head of thermocouples touches the mould, there exist four types of thermocouples installation state such as good-state, side-state, oil-state, vacancy-state and exist two types of thermocouples installation quality such as qualification, disqualification.The difference among temperature signals is derived from the instability of heat source and installation state. A set of stabile electric heater that overcomes the shortcoming of instability is designed to offer identified heat-environment to each thermocouple installed in mould. The influence from instability of heat source eliminated, installation quality and state can be measured by analyzing the differences caused only by installation state among temperature data acquired by each thermocouple.The data acquisition system consists of electric heater, mould, K-type thermocouple, PCL-818L, PCLD-789D, IPC610. Software system consists of three modules. They are data-acquisition module, heater-parameter-design module, installation-quality-measure module.