Simulation of Ferroalloy Casting in Copper Moulds

In China, for the production of ferroalloys such as ferrosilicon and ferroaluminium, the mould casting is usually used, and the material of casting mould is usually cast iron. However, in the process of periodic heating and cooling, cracks appear at the edge of mould. This severely affects the service life, thus increasing the casting cost, which has become a bottleneck of the development of ferroalloy industry. In the casting process, the lower thermal conductivity of the cast iron causes greater alternating thermal stresses, which are the reason for damages of cast iron moulds. In this study, the copper which has excellent heat transfer properties was used as the mould material to develop a new type of ferroalloy mould. In order to study the service performance of copper mould, the casting process of ferroalloy in copper mould and the temperature field of copper mould under different water cooling intensities were simulated by using ANSYS Workbench 17.0 software. The results show that under water cooling conditions, the maximum temperature of the mould cannot reach 1083℃ in the casting process, so the molten ferroalloy would not destroy the copper mould, which has low melting point, proofing the feasibility of copper as the mould material. In addition, the water cooling intensity of the mould has great influence on the cooling rate of the mould. And the optimized water cooling intensity is important for proper operation of the copper moulds.