Process Metallurgy Calculator

For information about licenses and availability, see About the Process Metallurgy Module.

Use a Process Metallurgy Calculator to set up calculations for steel and slag used in steelmaking. Define the composition of a steel (or other metal) and slag system using material groups: one each for steel, slag, and gas. You can save your material compositions directly from the calculator and quickly access and manage the materials and groups—it collects groups of saved materials according to type, thus making it easy to retrieve them.

You can add the calculator to My Projects node icon My Project directly (right-click and select it from the Create New Activity menu) or use the Process Metallurgy Template.

Examples of using the Process Metallurgy Calculator for Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) (with and without kinetics), a Ladle Furnace (LF) simulation, an Argon Oxygen Decarbarization (AOD), and a Vacuum Oxygen Decarborization (VOD) simulation are included with your installation. See Process Metallurgy Module Examples Collection for links.

You can find several learning resources on the Process Metallurgy page of our website (or in Thermo‑Calc, go to Help → Thermo‑Calc website). You can also subscribe to the Thermo‑Calc newsletter to be kept up-to-date about upcoming releases, training, examples, videos and much more.

Once you have added a Process Metallurgy Calculator, the Configuration window is further branched based on the Kinetics option you choose, Equilibrium, where kinetics are not considered, or Process simulation, where kinetics are considered using the Effective Equilibrium Reaction Zone (EERZ) model.

All settings, no matter what kinetics branch, are defined on the Configuration window Conditions and Options tabs.

Conditions Tab

For information about the individual settings on this tab, see Equilibrium Simulation: Conditions Tab.

Set the conditions for your calculation that define the slag, metal, and gas. The topic, Defining the Equilibrium Simulation, has instructions that walk you through the steps that represent a simplified steelmaking process.

For information about the individual settings on this tab, see Process Simulation: Conditions Tab.

Set the conditions for your calculation that best describes the process you want to simulate. The topic, Defining the Process Simulation, has instructions that walk you through the steps. Also the description of the kinetics examples are useful to help you better understand the settings.

Options Tab

For information about the individual settings, see Process Metallurgy Calculator: Options Tab.

Use the Material Manager to create and delete groups of materials and delete materials you have saved directly from the Process Metallurgy Calculator. It is useful for frequently used materials. Also see Working with the Material Manager.

The settings in Process Material Equilibrium and Grid define certain numerical settings used by the Thermo‑Calc calculation engine for equilibrium calculations such as whether tests for global minimization should always be performed (this significantly slows down the calculations) or never be performed (this speeds up calculations but miscibility gaps might not be found), and so forth.

Calculations of oxide systems are numerically challenging, and they can often fail. The default values are chosen to give the best general performance and reliability and should only be changed by an expert user. Also, a large amount of logic is implemented in the Process Metallurgy Module to improve the convergence and calculation speed of equilibrium calculations. The timestep control is related to how finely the times defined in the Process schedule are resolved. See About Dynamic Time Stepping for more information.

The Options tab is where you can locally define specific Process Metallurgy Calculator settings. Settings can also be applied globally from the Options window.

To open the Options window: From the main menu select Tools → Options → Graphical Mode and click the Activities tab. Then click Process Metallurgy. See Global Settings: Process Metallurgy.

Plots and Tables

Right-click the node to add a Plot Renderer or Table Renderer to visualize your results. Although both nodes work the same as with the other calculators in Thermo‑Calc, there are additional features and settings unique to the Process Metallurgy Module. Useful information is included throughout the documentation. You can also read more about the unique features in Working with the Process Metallurgy Module.