On the Metastable Ferrite Hot Rolling of Low‐Grade Electrical Steels: Its Microstructure, Texture and Low‐Temperature Annealed Structure

Abstract

The hot‐rolled sheets of low‐grade electrical steels undergo complete austenite‐ferrite phase transformation, resulting in fine equiaxed grains in the sheets. These fine initial grains eventually lead to a strong detrimental {111} texture in the final product after cold‐rolling and annealing process. This work, based on the phase transformation delay of columnar grain structure in cast slabs, proposes a novel approach called metastable ferrite hot rolling, namely, a two‐stage heating at 900 °C and then at 1100 °C shortly and hot rolling, to avoid complete transformation and to retain original {100} oriented regions. In addition, low‐temperature annealing is employed to increase grain sizes of hot‐rolled sheets thereby improving the final texture and magnetic properties after cold‐rolling and annealing. The results indicate that metastable ferritic columnar grains can be maintained during the two‐stage heating process at 1100 °C and primarily undergoes subgrain growth. The transformation from ferrite to austenite at 1100 °C is very slow. During the hot rolling with a high 86% reduction by two passes, the notable grain refinement is mainly caused by dynamic recrystallization rather than dynamic phase transformation as evidenced by the observation from the rolling plane.