Contactless Inductive Flow Tomography for Real-Time Control of Electromagnetic Actuators in Metal Casting

Area of Science:

• Metallurgical Engineering
• Fluid Dynamics
• Electromagnetics

Background:

• Accurate flow control of liquid metals is vital for metallurgical applications, particularly for liquid steel in continuous casting molds, directly impacting product quality.
• Electromagnetic brakes (EMBr) can modify liquid metal flow, but their control is often suboptimal due to a lack of real-time flow measurement techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop Contactless Inductive Flow Tomography (CIFT) into a real-time monitoring system suitable for controlling electromagnetic brakes (EMBr).
• To address challenges in integrating CIFT with EMBr, specifically EMBr strength compensation and real-time inverse problem solutions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized CIFT to measure flow-induced magnetic field perturbations and solved an inverse problem for flow reconstruction.
• Developed a numerical hysteresis model to compensate for large magnetic field offsets caused by the EMBr.
• Achieved real-time reconstruction by pre-calculating matrix inverses and selecting optimal regularization parameters.

Main Results:

• Successfully compensated for EMBr-induced magnetic field offsets, which were orders of magnitude larger than flow signals.
• Demonstrated real-time CIFT reconstruction without compromising the quality of flow imaging.
• Validated the integrated system on a continuous caster model with a ruler-type EMBr.

Conclusions:

• The developed real-time CIFT system effectively overcomes EMBr-induced magnetic field interference.
• This advancement enables closed-loop control of EMBr based on actual flow conditions, paving the way for enhanced metallurgical process control and product quality.