Cleanliness of Alloying Structural Steel Original Research Article

Alloying structural steel used for mechanical structures has a high requirement for cleanliness because its failures are greatly affected by non-metallic inclusions and total oxygen content in steel. It has been reported by some steelmaking plants to have some problems in controlling total oxygen content and inclusions during alloying structural steel production. For this purpose, cleanliness control in 0. 2C-0. 3Si-0. 6Mn-lCr-0. 2Mo steel was investigated. Firstly, low melting temperature zone (≤1 873 K) of CaO-Al2O3-MgO system and formation condition of low melting temperature inclusions were investigated through thermodynamic equilibrium calculation. On this basis, industrial tests were carried out. Through sampling at different stages, transformation of oxide inclusions and change of total oxygen content in steel were studied. The results show that: in order to form CaO-Al2O3-MgO system inclusions with low melting temperature, mass percent of A12O3, MgO and CaO in inclusions should be controlled from 37.6% to 70.8%, 0 to 17.4% and 25.5% to 60.6%; For the condition of 1873 K and 0.05% (mass percent) dissolved aluminum in steel, the activities of dissolved oxygen, magnesium and calcium should be controlled as 0. 298 × 10−4 −2 × 10−4, 0.1 × 10−5 −40 × 10−5 and 0.8 × 10−8 −180 × 10−8 respectively. With secondary refining proceeding, average total oxygen content and inclusion amount decrease, the type of most inclusions changes from Al2 O3 after tapping to Al2 O3-MgO after top slag is formed during ladle furnace refining and finally to CaO-Al2 O3-MgO after RH treatment. In the final products, average total oxygen content was 12. 7 × 10−6 and most inclusions were in spherical shape with size less than 5 μm.