With a specially designed water-cooled mold, casting thickness could be varied between 40 and 80㎜. With the decrease of casting thickness the secondary dendrite arm spacing was reduced and the ferrite grain size, after γ->α phase transformation, was reduced. In addition, the casting thickness has no influence on mechanical properties and ferrite grain size after hot rolling with the different total reduction in the range of 0.7∼1.4 in the process of roughing mill. So it is possible, in contrast to conventional casting and rolling, the strand thickness could be reduced during the casting stage instead of hot rolling process without the inferiority in mechanical properties. |
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