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March 2006 — Danieli Davy Distington was recently awarded a contract to install two new twin-strand casters in Hangang’s new facility in Hebei Province.

Together, the two new casters will provide a total production of 5.2 million tonnes/year of qualified slabs in a wide range of specialty grades. The two state-of-the-art vertical curved casters will have a vertical length of over 2.6 meters, a 9.5-meter main radius, and roll diagram with continuous bending/unbending design. The casters will have a containment length of about 40 meters that will enable maximum casting speeds exceeding two meters/minute.

The machines, fed by 270- to 300-tonne heat size ladles, will produce slabs weighing up to 47 tonnes, with thicknesses ranging from 230 to 250 mm, and widths ranging from 900 to 2150 mm. Technological features will include INMO moulds and integrated hydraulic oscillator, designed to incorporate electromagnetic flow control equipment; advanced breakout and sticking prevention systems, with full thermal mapping of the mould; and OPTIMUM segments with application of the Dynamic Soft Reduction process. The casters will also offer air-mist secondary cooling, dynamically controlled by a mathematical model of the solidification process; and a continuous bending and unbending roll diagram designed to minimize stress on the slab during solidification.

The new facility will produce qualified slabs in ULC, LC, MC, peritectic and HC steels, micro-alloy grades (also for pipe applications), steels for automotive applications, dual-phase, and trip steels.

Danieli will design the entire casting plant, including maintenance facilities, discharging and slab handling areas. Slab handling will be designed to handle slabs coming from all four casting strands and to allow hot charging to the downstream hot strip mill. Danieli Automation will develop and supply the automation and process control systems, up to level 2, including application of mathematical models for control of the process.

Plant design will be carried out in cooperation with CERI, the local design institute, with the target of casting the first slabs within 20 months of contract initiation.

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