Abstract

For investigations of interactions between different refractory materials and steel melt, a so called steel casting simulator is used. Different kinds of experimental setup can be applied to investigate the interactions between refractory components and steel melts with different various compositions. Porous filter or dense prismatic materials can be dipped and rotated in steel melt which contains a defined amount of endogenous inclusions. In case of this setup it’s possible to removed and cool down the test materials under oxygen free conditions to exclude atmospheric reactions, e.g. carbon oxidation in the case of carbon containing materials. These experiments enable the investigation of filter materials with different surface chemistry and attached non-metallic inclusions after steel melt contact. It has been shown, that carbon bonded alumina filter materials forms a secondary alumina skin-like layer which intensify the deposition of inclusions. Crucible Tests are performed under the same inert conditions with various steel melts under the aspect of long-term stability of new developed materials under reproducible conditions. The simulation of metal casting through model nozzle components allows investigating clogging phenomena simultaneously at two model samples at each trial. The recorded mass flow during the test, the solid steel before and after as well as the pre and post mortem characterisation of the model nozzles show significant influences of the surface chemistry to the clogging properties.