Evolution of microstructure, texture and inhibitor of medium temperature grain-oriented silicon steel

Abstract

The medium temperature reheating and two-stage cold rolling process were adopted to produce industrialized Grain-oriented silicon steel. Results showed there were three sections (surface layer, transition layer and central layer) along the thickness direction on hot rolled sheets. Surface layer was occupied by complete recrystallization grains with average grain size 42.81 µm, while the central layer mainly consisted of fibrous microstructure. The Goss texture appeared only on surface layer with content 3.44%∼3.65%. After the first cold rolling with 72% reduction and decarburization annealing, the primary recrystallization occurred and average grains size reached 19.0 µm, simultaneously accompanied with texture rotated to λ, γ fiber texture and Goss texture dropped to 2.89%. Adopting the second cold rolling with 58% reduction, the cold rolled sheet consisted of deformed fiber microstructure and the texture maintained γ fiber texture with a peak at {111} <112>. The precipitates in hot rolled sheets comprised Cu2S and few AlN, and the average particle size was ∼14 nm. The inhibitors in the decarburization annealing sheet were mainly AlN, Cu2S, MnS and their composite precipitation, which were spherical or massive with the average particle size ∼21 nm. The single Goss oriented grains with average grain size 9.41 mm were obtained after high temperature annealing, and the intensity reached 873.30. The final magnetic properties were: B8 = 1.865 T and P1.7/50 = 1.124 W/kg, which met the requirement of 27Q120.