Industrial Production of Fine Grained Ferrite in Low-Carbon Steel

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ezz Aldekhela (EZDK) Steel Company, Alexandria, Egypt

2 Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, Suez University, 43721, Suez, Egypt Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Al Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh 11432, Saudi Arabia

3 Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, Suez University, 43721, Suez, Egypt

Abstract

Refinement of the ferrite grains provides a promising approach to simultaneously improving both the ‎strength and the toughness of steels. Among recent techniques to obtain ultrafine ferrite, dynamic ‎strain induced transformation (DSIT) is used. This type of treatment is sensitive to steel ‎composition, deformation temperature, the prior austenite grain size, strain and cooling rate.‎This work is aiming to improve the mechanical properties of steels using ferrite grain refining ‎through trials on industrial scale using a compact strip production plant (CSP) with hot strip mill ‎‎ (HSM) containing six stands F1 – F6 in EZDK Steel Company. The chemical composition of the ‎trials was ~0.05% C, 0.05% Si and 0.5% ‎Mn. The effect of the finishing deformation temperature at the last rolling stand (F6) on the ‎microstructure and mechanical properties was studied. In addition the effect of changing strain at ‎the final two rolling stands (F5 and F6) was carried out during trials. Comparing the traditionally processed steel which resulted in a ferritic grain size of 11µm with the processed fine grained (~5µm) steel, the yield stress has increased by 23% and the tensile strength increased by 12% on the expense of only 5% decrease in the ductility. However, the impact energy has improved by 7.5 %.

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