Abstract： The purpose of the work is to further develop and validate the optical emission method pulse distribution analysis (PDA) for rapid inclusion characterisation in steel production. The experimental work was focused on investigation of several operational parameters: spark energy, spark frequency and time gating of signal acquisition. The results showed that a low spark energy improves the detection limit, but at the expense of measuring statistics due to a smaller sample volume. The measuring frequency proved to have no significant influence on the analytical results, but several existing instruments cannot handle the highest spark frequencies above about 300 Hz in PDA mode due to limitations in the electronics. Investigation of time gating (TRS) gave only a marginal improvement in the detection limit of Si outliers above the metallic content. The work also revealed that there is a risk to detect “false” outliers due to asymmetric intensity distributions. This has resulted in the development of more advanced algorithms for outlier detection, increasing the accuracy of the method. Another limitation found is that the particle number density must not exceed about 10 000 inclusions/mm3 for the method to effectively detect single inclusions. A method to overcome this limitation has been suggested, but not yet evaluated. The accuracy of quantitative determination of the Al content in inclusions has been verified by reference methods. In conclusion, it has been demonstrated that state-of-the-art PDA is a very powerful technique for rapid inclusion characterisation in steels. Furthermore, the speed of analysis is sufficiently high for process feedback and controllable.
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