Improved texture and magnetic properties in thin-gauge strip-cast non-oriented electrical steel through matching design of hot-cold rolling

In this study, an optimized matching design of hot rolling and one-stage cold rolling was adopted to prepare thin-gauge strip-cast non-oriented electrical steel. The microstructure and texture evolution of the whole processing process were studied. The results indicated that the deformed microstructure after direct cold rolling was dominated by fibrous bands, and the annealed sheet exhibited strong g-fiber and {114}< 841 > texture. However, after introducing appropriate hot rolling with reduction of 40-55%, the shear bands substructure in the cold rolled sheet were effectively increased. The unfavorable g-fiber texture in the annealed sheets was weakened, and the favorable Goss texture was significantly enhanced. In addition, compared to direct cold rolling, the combined processing of hot rolling and cold rolling reduced the dislocation density of the cold rolled microstructure, resulting in the increase in the average grain size of annealed microstructure. Moreover, the homogeneity of microstructure was improved. Finally, the magnetic properties of the thin-gauge non-oriented electrical steel were significantly improved. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).