In regard of the reduction of energy consumption during the production of steel slabs and strips different charging procedures are of high economic interest. Especially hot and direct charging procedures are used in modern ways of strip production like CSP and strip casting. For simulation of these procedures and their related effects on the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the material, the complete process chain of melting, casting and hot rolling in one heat has been realised in a pilot scale. In this concept process parameters such as temperature over time are controlled during the complete process. By variation of the thermomechanical process parameters the microstructure and the mechanical properties gained in different processing routes can effectively be simulated. This new set-up allows the simulation of the casting and rolling processes not only in a laboratory scale by using conventional compression, tensile and quench tests but now also in a pilot scale. The results will be used as input parameters for FEM simulation. In this paper the set-up of the laboratory facility is described with the measured and controlled parameters.
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