Application of soft reduction to improve the quality of long products for automotive parts

摘要

Long products with a more uniform microstructure and equal distribution of alloying elements over the cross section and also larger rolled sizes with sound centers are increasingly requested by customers. To fulfill these requirements, the use of soft reduction in continuous casting is the process technology of choice because both the center segregation and the center porosity are effectively reduced. For the investigated steel grades 100Cr6, 42CrMoS4 and C4C the evolution of the microstructure in relation to the measured segregation and porosity values illustrates the quality improvement from the cast bloom and billet to the finished product when applying soft reduction.