Continuous Monitoring of Butt Curl Development During DC Casting—Development and Application

Cast start situations for rolling ingot DC casting can represent severe risks for cast shop workers due to unforeseen development of butt curl of individual ingots. Hydro’s R&D center Bonn has the ambition to provide procedures and related tools helping to preventing these risks. In order to react on the critical development of butt curl of individual ingots in a casting unit a monitoring of relative motion of the bottom side of the solidifying ingot to the starter block is required. This means a continuous distance measurement under extremely harsh conditions. Possible solutions must be watertight, heat resistant, need wireless data transmission capabilities and implementation and preparation of the system have to be user-friendly. Current status of the development includes real-time visualization and data storage in the process control system. This paper describes the technological approach, the testing under plant conditions and application examples of the system.