Influence of Dendritic Morphology on the Calculation of Macrosegregation in Steel Ingot

The simulation of macrosegregation in a 2.45-ton steel ingot with the three-phase mixed columnar-equiaxed model was presented previously. The results showed an overestimation of the intensity of bottom negative segregation. The reason is due to the assumed globular morphology for the equiaxed crystal. Therefore, in this paper a simple approach is suggested to treat the dendritic morphology of equiaxed crystals. Three aspects are improved: the drag force between the moving equiaxed crystals and the surrounding melt, the mechanism of the columnar-to-equiaxed transition, the packing limit of the equiaxed crystals. The modified model is used to calculate the macrosegregation of the same ingot. It is found that the modified model predicts less severe negative segregation in the bottom equiaxed zone than the previous globular equiaxed model does, i.e. it agrees better to the experiment. The model considering simplified-dendritic morphology improves the calculation accuracy.