FEM Simulation Of Continuous Casting Temperature Field For High-speed Steel Rollers By CPC Method And Optimum Design Of Parameters

High speed steel roll manufactured by CPC (Continuous pouring Process Cladding) method has excellent mechanical properties. However, it's industrialized and commercial process has not been realized and developed in China. The fundamental principle of CPC method is that by continuous pouring and cladding, the surface of forged roll core can be deposited and covered with a certain thickness of high speed steel metal. The key to high quality roll is the performance of combined layer. If the temperature and heat are not controlled properly during the casting process, several defects, such as core's excessive erosion by outer metal, lack of fusion or even breakout will probably occur in the roll. Because of these pitfalls, the controlling of temperature distribution is very essential to the whole process flow. Further more, the state of temperature is influenced by many factors, some determinative of which are the power of heater and preheater, temperature of casting, speed of drawing, height of water-cooler, etc. Manpower, financial and material resources will be definitely drained if carrying it out under such a situation with multiple variables directly by repeating experiments. Fortunately, numerical simulation method can not only demonstrate the whole technical process by offering image display, but also assist to foretell the flaws in real experiment or production. What is more, the relevant parameters will be obtained by means of inverse calculating. Therefore, numerical simulation method is of great significance to the development and production of high speed steel roll.Based on ANSYS, the classic finite element software, the craft of high speed steel rolls by CPC method was studied in this paper. In the first step, time-dependent transient temperature field was stimulated according to the original craft. By this, regular pattern and sequence of solidifying was analyzed and then concluded. At the same time, a flaw led by original preheating and cladding process was detected. Aiming at the emerged problems, an improvement was presented and the relevant parameters were neatly calculated by optimum design method. The cladding process has been finally advanced, for the temperature field based on improved craft fully satisfied the fusion requirements. At last, on the basis of foregoing simulation and calculation, the interrupted pouring and cladding process was similarly stimulated to compare with the initial CPC process.By JMatPro software, the thermophysical constants of core and outer layer metals were precisely calculated which were much closer to the truth value of high temperature material properties. The loading and shifting process of heating and cooling equipments were achieved through APDL programming language. The 'Birth and Death Element' technic was feasibly used to build the dynamical temperature distribution. With the optimization module in ANSYS, the optimum values of the power of heater and preheater, casting temperature and certain key parameters in improved craft were obtained. Thus, the inverse calculation of parameters was realized.