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Age-hardenable copper alloy

Age-hardenable copper alloy description/claims

1. Field of the Invention

The invention relates to an age-hardenable copper alloy as material for producing blocks for the side dams of continuous strip-casting installations.

2. Description of Related Art

The worldwide aim, especially in the steel and copper industries, to cast semifinished material to as close to the final dimensions as possible, in order to save hot forming and/or cold forming steps, led even before 1970 to the development of the so-called Hazelett strip-casting installations, in which the molten metal solidifies in the gap between two bands guided in parallel. The side dams in, for example, the strip-casting installation known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,865,176, are made of metallic mold blocks or dam blocks having a T groove, which are lined up on a flexible continuous band such as one made of steel, and which move in the longitudinal direction, synchronously with the casting bands. In this context, the dam blocks bound the casting mold cavity formed by the casting bands.

Also known, from EP 0 974 413 A1 are dam block chains for continuous strip-casting, formed by blocks having a slot and key. The advantage of these further developed mold blocks having a slot and key comes about due to a more exact alignment and guidance of the blocks during the casting process, and leads to an improvement of the surface quality of the cast strip. In order to prevent premature wear of the side edges of the blocks by plastic deformation and the formation of cracks, a suitable material has to have great hardness and strength, a fine-grained microstructure and a good long-term resistance to softening. In order to remove the heat of solidification from the liquid molten material, a high thermal conductivity of the mold block material is additionally required.

Finally, optimum fatigue behavior of the material is of the most decisive significance, which will ensure that, after leaving the casting segment, the thermal stresses appearing during the cooling off of the blocks do not lead to cracking of the blocks at the corners of the T groove incorporated for the accommodation of the steel band. In this context, particularly great thermal stresses are to be expected in dam blocks having the design using slot and key, on account of the unfavorable geometry and mass distribution.

If such cracks caused by thermal shock appear, the respective mold block will fall out of the dam block chain of the continuous strip-casting machine after even a short period, molten metal being able to run uncontrollably from the casting mold cavity and to damage parts of the installation. For the purpose of exchanging the damaged mold blocks, the entire strip-casting installation has to be stopped and the casting process has to be interrupted.

A testing method has proven itself for checking the tendency to crack, in which the mold blocks are submitted to heat treatment for two hours at 500° C. and are subsequently quenched in water at 20 to 25° C. Even if this thermal shock test is repeated several times, in the case of a suitable material no cracks may appear in the T groove surface.

EP 0 346 645 B1 describes an age-hardenable copper-based alloy which is made of 1.6 to 2.4% nickel, 0.5 to 0.8% silicon, 0.01 to 0.2% zirconium, optionally up to 0.4% chromium and/or up to 0.2% iron, the remainder being copper including production-caused impurities. This known copper alloy basically satisfies the prerequisites for a long service life, if used as the material for producing standard mold blocks for the side dams of continuous strip-casting installations. The following combination of properties is given for this copper alloy:

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Copper-zinc alloy and synchronizer ring produced therefrom
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Industry Class:
Alloys or metallic compositions

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