On the development of the goss texture in iron-3% silicon

On the through-process texture evolution assessment in grain oriented Fe-3 wt% Si steel produced by a novel directional inoculation technique

A novel directional inoculation technique has been designed to cast thin slab ingots containing Goss (or near Goss) oriented components in the as cast microstructure under the combined effect of oriented nucleation and oriented growth. The same has been targeted so as to retain Goss orientations and simultaneously develop γ fiber components (ranging from {111}<[Formula: see text]> to {111}<112>) during hot rolling. The designed scheme of directional inoculation achieved oriented nucleation by the effect of exogenously added soft magnetic inoculants under magnetic field and oriented growth by the effect of fast cooling rates prevailing in the mould. The choice of 65Fe-35Co (wt%) system as soft magnetic inoculants was made taking into account the similarity in crystal structure and lattice parameter. The chemically synthesized inoculants under the effect of external magnetic field during solidification were able to exhibit directional inoculation. Variation in the cast microstructure and microtexture by varying the extent of inoculant addition was studied by EBSD technique. The ingots cast under different conditions were subjected to a designed hot rolling schedule and the through process microstructural and microtextural evolution was assessed. It was observed that fine equiaxed grains with initial cube orientations in the as cast structure could lead to the most desirable microstructural as well as microtextural gradient in the hot band.

Binder jet additive manufacturing method to fabricate near net shape crack-free highly dense Fe-6.5 wt.% Si soft magnets

High silicon (Si) electrical steel has the potential for efficient use in applications such as electrical motors and generators with cost-effective in processing, but it is difficult to manufacture. Increasing the Si content beyond 3 wt.% improves magnetic and electrical properties, with 6.5 wt.% being achievable. The main goal of this research is to design, develop, and implement a scalable additive manufacturing process to fabricate Fe with 6.5 wt.% Si (Fe-6Si) steel with high magnetic permeability, high electrical resistivity, low coercivity, and low residual induction that other methods cannot achieve because of manufacturing limitations. Binder jet additive manufacturing was used to deposit near net shape components that were subsequently sintered via solid-state sintering to achieve near full densification. Here, it is shown that the use of solid-state sintering mitigates cracking since no rapid solidification occurs unlike fusion-based additive technologies. The Fe-6Si samples demonstrated an ultimate tensile strength of 434 MPa, electrical resistivity of 98 μΩ cm, and saturation magnetization of 1.83 T with low coercivity and high permeability. The results strongly supports to replace the only available 0.1 mm thick chemical vapor deposition (CVD) produced Si steel using the cost effective AM method with good mechanical and magnetic properties for motor applications.

Tailoring One-Pass Asymmetric Rolling of Extra Low Carbon Steel for Shear Texture and Recrystallization

Systematic single pass rolling experiments were carried out at room temperature on extra low carbon steel by varying the roll diameter ratio between 1:1 to 1:2 and thickness reduction per pass in the range of 20–75%. The aim of this study was to define the conditions under which the rolling texture can transit into a shear texture. The consequences for grain fragmentation, tensile strength, recrystallization texture, and grain growth kinetics were also studied. It was found that in a certain range of thickness reduction per pass and asymmetric ratio, an effective rotation towards the shear texture takes place in conventional rolling. The value of the shear coefficient factor (shear strain rate/rolling strain rate) in asymmetric rolling depends on the selection of thickness reduction per pass. The measured value of shear coefficient was found to be independent of the number of passes used in asymmetric rolling. The consequence of arising shear textures is an acceleration of grain fragmentation. After rapid heat treatment, both tensile strength and recrystallization kinetics of asymmetric rolled sheets showed merits over the conventional rolling. Only the evolved Goss orientation from asymmetric conditions of deformation shows higher stability than any other preferred shear texture components after complete recrystallization.

Effects of Processing Conditions on Texture and Microstructure Evolution in Extra-Low Carbon Steel during Multi-Pass Asymmetric Rolling

Multi-pass rolling was carried out on extra-low carbon steel at room temperature by imposing different ratios of asymmetry in the roll-diameters as well as by conventional mode. The aim of this study is to understand the effect of shear deformation due to the asymmetric conditions on the development of the rolling texture and the possibilities of propagating the shear deformation into the mid-thickness area of the sheet. The trends of the measured texture developments in both symmetric and asymmetric rolling indicate their dependence primarily on the stability and fraction of the Goss {110}<001> and the rotated cube {001}<111> orientations. The effects of asymmetry conditions were further examined on the microstructure evolution and were correlated to the increased orientation inhomogeneity and grain fragmentation. Both texture and microstructure development showed their dependence on the applied thickness reduction per pass, on the total thickness reduction of the sheet as well as on the degree of the imposed asymmetry. It was found that shear textures can be obtained by asymmetric rolling at conditions where all three parameters—asymmetry ratio, strain in one pass, and the total accumulated strain—are as large as possible.

Mechanism of secondary recrystallization of Goss grains in grain-oriented electrical steel

Since its invention by Goss in 1934, grain-oriented (GO) electrical steel has been widely used as a core material in transformers. GO exhibits a grain size of over several millimeters attained by secondary recrystallization during high-temperature final batch annealing. In addition to the unusually large grain size, the crystal direction in the rolling direction is aligned with <001>, which is the easy magnetization axis of α-iron. Secondary recrystallization is the phenomenon in which a certain very small number of {110}<001> (Goss) grains grow selectively (about one in 106 primary grains) at the expense of many other primary recrystallized grains. The question of why the Goss orientation is exclusively selected during secondary recrystallization has long been a main research subject in this field. The general criterion for secondary recrystallization is a small and uniform primary grain size, which is achieved through the inhibition of normal grain growth by fine precipitates called inhibitors. This paper describes several conceivable mechanisms of secondary recrystallization of Goss grains mainly based on the selective growth model.

EBSD study of angular deviations from the Goss component in grain-oriented electrical steels

The magnetic properties of grain-oriented (GO) electrical steels strongly depend on the distribution of the α and β angles, i.e., the deviations of the easy magnetisation <100> from the rolling direction (RD) in the rolling plane and out of the rolling plane, respectively. However, most Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) studies consider the standard Goss deviation angle, which includes the rotation of the (110) plane about the RD. Therefore, in the present work, a new procedure is demonstrated for deriving the α and β angles from EBSD mappings to obtain a quantitative texture characterisation in line with the magnetic properties. This procedure is later applied to 37 GO steels after secondary recrystallisation that exhibit a wide range of permeability levels. The relation between the texture and the polarisation at 800A/m (J800) that is measured in the present study by EBSD is compared to the one that has been determined in previous papers with optical goniometers and X-ray diffraction techniques, and this relation is subsequently used to define a relevant parameter to describe the orientation quality of the grains. The results indicate that the average angle of the α and β deviations is a relevant deviation parameter for the characterisation of grain orientations. Finally, it is demonstrated that the combination of the quantitative correlation between polarisation and texture with the orientation imaging of EBSD offers the possibilities of both studying the crystallographic environment of highly oriented grains in the primary recrystallised matrix for the production of high-permeability steels and evaluating the spatial distribution of the angular deviations in GO steels after secondary recrystallisation.

Simulation of Earing during Deep Drawing of bcc Steel by Use of a Texture Component Crystal Plasticity Finite Element Method

We present a numerical study on the influence of crystallographic texture on the earing behavior of a low carbon steel during cup drawing. The simulations are conducted by using the texture component crystal plasticity finite element method which accounts for the full elastic-plastic anisotropy of the material and for the explicit incorporation of texture including texture update. Several important texture components that typically occur in commercial steel sheets were selected for the study. By assigning different spherical scatter widths to them the resulting ear profiles were calculated under consideration of texture evolution. The study reveals that 8, 6, or 4 ears can evolve during cup drawing depending on the starting texture. An increasing number of ears reduces the absolute ear height. The effect of the orientation scatter width (texture sharpness) on the sharpness of the ear profiles was also studied. It was observed that an increase in the orientation scatter of certain texture components entails a drop in ear sharpness while for others the effect is opposite.