New cold-rolled deep-drawing grades

An unstabilised ultra low carbon steel (12 ppm of C) offers an attractive combination of formability properties like yield strength, elongation, mean r-value and BH-index. The major drawback is its large planar anisotropy. This is attributed to the large grain-size of the hot-rolled product. An increase in the cooling rate (using ultra fast cooling technology) or a decrease in the coiling temperature do not refine the hot-band grain size. However, an optimisation of the cold-rolling and the annealing sequences result in a better balance of the drawing properties. Alloying elements like Cr, B, V, Al, Si or reduction of Mn content exert only a minor influence on the final properties. An addition of Nb (mass contents of 0.01 %) improves the drawability but decreases the BH-index when conventional continuous annealing temperatures are applied.