Improvement of surface quality on peritectic steel slabs

Peritectic steel grades are very sensitive to microcracking along austenitic grain boundaries in continuous casting. Irsid and Aktiengesellschaft der Dillinger Huttenwerke (DH) have combined laboratory studies and industrial trials to improve surface quality on these sensitive grades. Laboratory studies at Irsid confirmed the hypothesis that a very thin layer of ferrite along austenitic grain boundaries is detrimental for cracking and indicate that the risk of cracking decreases as soon as ferrite ratio is above 10 %. Dilatometric investigations demonstrate that there is a strong shift between thermodynamic equilibrium and beginning of gamma-->alpha phase transformation under casting conditions. Furthermore, at the slab surface, there is no cyclic transformation gamma-->alpha-->gamma induced by thermal cycling in front of spray nozzles and supporting rolls. DH performed trials with various cooling strategies on its new vertical caster No. 5. No cracks appear with intensive cooling whereas microcracks are present with soft cooling. These results are in agreement with laboratory studies. Intensive cooling is the standard condition at DH. With this process, microcracking is avoided for all slab formats.