Simulation of ingot casting processes at Deutsche Edelstahlwerke GmbH^®

To enhance the quality of tool steels it is necessary to analyse all stages of the production process. During the ingot- or continuous casting processes and the following solidification, material and geometry depending reactions cause defects such as macro segregations or porosities. In former times the trial and error approach, together with the experience and creativity of the steelworks engineers was used to improve the as-cast quality, with a high amount of test procedures and a high demand of research time and costs. Further development in software and algorithms has allowed modern simulation techniques to find their way into industrial steel production and casting-simulations are widely used to achieve an accurate prediction of the ingot quality. To improve the as-cast quality, several ingot casting processes of tool steels were studied at the R&D department of Deutsche Edelstahlwerke GmbH by using the numerical casting simulation software MAGMASOFT^®. In this paper some results extracted from the simulation software are shown and compared to experimental investigations.