Effect of Strip Casting on Magnetic Anisotropy of Non-Oriented Electrical Steels

A hot band and an as-cast strip were produced by conventional hot rolling and strip casting process. Then the hot band with or without annealing and as-cast strip were cold rolled and annealed. Microstructure, texture evolution and the magnetic anisotropy were investigated in detail. It was found that the annealed sheets produced by the conventional hot band were dominated by gamma-fibre (< 111 >//ND) and alpha-fibre (< 110 >//RD) texture while products of the annealed hot band were characterized by much weaker gamma-fibre and strong Goss ({110}< 001 >) texture. The magnetic induction of the non-annealing specimen decreased from 0 degrees (RD, 1.69 T) to 75 degrees (1.63 T) and then increased slightly whereas the values of the hot band annealing specimen increased from 45 degrees to 90 degrees (TD). The difference between RD and TD was reduced to similar to 0.02 T. In case of strip casting, pronounced Cube ({001}< 100) and weak Goss texture were obtained in the annealed sheets. The magnetic induction decreased from 0 degrees (1.72 T) to 45 degrees (1.63 T) and then increased gradually with small difference (almost zero) between 0 degrees and 90 degrees. The calculation of anisotropy energy demonstrated that this change was related to the dominant Cube texture in the strip-casting product.