Submitted to Materials & Metallurgical Transactions B on August 22, 2005: Paper title: State of the Art in the Control of Inclusions during Steel Ingot Casting Authors: Lifeng Zhang (Correspondence author) Formerly Research Scientist at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, now professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) 7491 Trondheim, Norway. Tel: +47-73594123 Fax: +47-73550203 Email:
[email protected] B.G. Thomas Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Tel: 217-333-6919, Fax: 217-244-6534 Email:
[email protected] 1 Abstract: This paper extensively reviews published research on inclusions in ingot steel and defects on ingot products, methods to measure and detect inclusions in steel, the causes of exogenous inclusions, and the transport and entrapment of inclusions during fluid flow, segregation and solidification of steel cast in ingot molds. Exogenous inclusions in ingots originate mainly from reoxidation of the molten steel, slag entrapment and lining erosion, which are detailed in this paper. The measures to prevent the formation of exogenous inclusions and improve their removal are provided, which are very useful for the clean steel production of ingot industries. Key words: Steel Ingot Casting, Inclusions, Exogenous Inclusions, Steel Reoxidation, Slag Entrapment, Lining Erosion, Fluid Flow 2 I. INTRODUCTION Although the percentage of steel produced in the world via ingot casting has decreased to 11.2% (figure 1 [8]) in 2003, some low-alloy steel grades and steel for special applications can only be produced by this process.