Development of Diagnosis System of Mold Oscillation in a Continuous Slab Casting Machine

연속 주조기의 주형 진동 진단 시스템의 개발

In order to prevent shell sticking by providing sufficient lubrication between the strand and the mold, the mold oscillation has been used. Now it is well known that the shape of the oscillation curve has a decisive effect on the surface quality of the cast product. Besides, oscillation parameters such as stroke and frequency are also very important. In order to guarantee that parameters which have been found to be optimal for a certain grade of steel do not change with time, periodical checks of the physical condition of the whole equipment are necessary. The portable mold oscillation analyzer with integrated computer, developed by POSCO, records the movement of the mold in every spatial direction. The system uses the gap sensors to measure the mold movement (displacement ) in the two horizontal directions according to the mold narrow and broad faces and the vertical strokes in the four corners of mold. The gap sensor is a non-contacting minute displacement measuring device using the principle of high frequency eddy current loss. The mold oscillation diagnosis system integrates the gap sensors, their converters and the industrial portable computer with plug-in data acquisition boards. The all programs, such as the fast Fourier transformation module (amplitude and phase spectrums) and harmonic analysis module, was coded by LabVIEW$^{TM}$ software as the graphical language. In an own 'expert module' which is included in the diagnosis program, one can obtain much information about the mold oscillation equipment.