Simulation of Ferroalloy Casting in Copper Moulds

In China, for the production of ferroalloysFerroalloy such as ferrosilicon and ferroaluminium, the mouldMould casting is usually used, and the material of casting mouldMould is usually cast iron. However, in the process of periodic heating and coolingCooling, 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 ferroalloyFerroalloy 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 mouldsMould. In this study, the copperCopper which has excellent heat transferHeat transfer properties was used as the mouldMould material to develop a new type of ferroalloyFerroalloy mouldMould. In order to study the service performance of copperCopper mouldMould, the casting process of ferroalloyFerroalloy in copper mouldMould and the temperature fieldTemperature field of copperCopper mouldMould under different water coolingCooling intensities were simulated by using ANSYS Workbench 17.0 softwareSoftware. The results show that under water coolingCooling conditions, the maximum temperature of the mouldMould cannot reach 1083℃ in the casting process, so the molten ferroalloyFerroalloy would not destroy the copperCopper mouldMould, which has low melting point, proofing the feasibility of copperCopper as the mould material. In addition, the water coolingCooling intensity of the mouldMould has great influence on the coolingCooling rate of the mould. And the optimized water coolingCooling intensity is important for proper operationOperation of the copperCopper mouldsMould.