Development of Tensile Test to Investigate Mechanical Adhesion of Thermal Oxide Scales on Hot-Rolled Steel Strips Produced Using Different Finishing Temperatures

Abstract

The objective of this work was to carry out tensile tests to investigate the effect of finishing temperature on mechanical adhesion of thermal oxide scale on hot-rolled low carbon steel strips. Two hot-rolled low carbon steel strips were produced in an industrial hot rolling line by fixing a coiling temperature at 620 °C and varying finishing temperatures at 820 and 910 °C. Two testing methods were conducted. First, each of a number of samples was subjected to a given imposed strain with ex-situ imaging of scale surface after straining. Second, only one sample was strained in a test with ex-situ imaging of scale surface at every 2 mm elongation of the sample. A spallation ratio, an area where scale was spalled out and normalised by the total area observed by microscope, was plotted as a function of the imposed strain. These two methods gave the same tendency of results as follows. At a given strain, the spallation ratio of scale on steel produced using higher finishing temperature was larger. The gradient of spallation ratio with respect to the imposed strain of that scale was also steeper. This reflects the higher susceptibility of scale to spall out with increasing imposed strain. This behaviour might be related to the larger thickness of scale on steel produced using higher finishing temperature. For the second testing method, lowering the magnification of microscope to observe scale spallation from 50x to 20x increased R2 of the curve of spallation ratio versus the imposed strain, as well as improved the reproducibility of the test.