The temperature of liquid steel for continuous casting determines the casting speed and cooling conditions. The failure to meet the required casting process parameters may result in obtaining slabs of inconsistent quality. Numerical methods allow for real processes to be modelled. There are professional computer programs on the market, so the results of the simulations allow us to understand the processes that occur during casting and solidification of a slab. The study attempts to evaluate the impact of the superheat temperature on the slab structure based on the industrial operating parameters of the continuous casting machine.

Processing of metal alloys in semi-solid state is a way of producing many near net-shape parts and nowadays is commercially successful. Particular behaviour of alloys in the partially liquid state, having non-dendritic microstructure, is a base for thixoforming processing. Processing materials in the semi-solid state concerns alloys with relatively wide solidification range. Thermodynamic modelling can be used as a one of a potential tools that allow to identify alloys with proper temperature range. It means that the key feature of alloys suitable for thixoforming is a widely enough melting range, allowing for precise control of material temperature. The data gathered from thermodynamics calculations can also pay off in the industrial thixoforming processes design. The goal of this paper is to identify copper alloys which can be successfully shaped in the semi-solid state. Apart to thermodynamic calculations, the observations on high temperature microscope was carried out. During experiments the solidus, liquidus and also deformation temperatures can be determined. An experimental work allows confirming results obtained within the confines of thermodynamic calculations and firstly to determine the deformation temperatures which are the optimal for shaping processes. The basic achievement of this work is an identification of copper alloy groups possible for shaping in the semi-solid state. At the first part of the paper, the basic criteria of suitable alloys were described. Next, both the solid fraction curves for copper alloys with different alloying elements using ProCAST software and the phase diagrams were determined to identify the solidification temperature ranges of these alloys. In the second part of these paper, the identification of the deformation temperatures was carried out with use of high temperature microscope observation.