Evolution Behavior and Closure Mechanism of Porosity in Large Billet during the Reduction Pretreatment

The reduction pretreatment process was proposed to be applied to large billets for the purpose of alleviating the center porosities and reducing the rolling ratio. This study focused on the evolution behavior and closure mechanism of porosity in a large billet during reduction pretreatment. The porosities were characterized by ultrasonic scanning and 3D reconstruction. The results showed that the porosities near the surface of the billet were firstly closed during the reduction pretreatment. The reduction began to effectively act on the center of the billet at the deformation of 0.16. When the reduction amount increased to 0.20–0.22, both the pore number and the porosity degree at the center of the billet were the smallest. As the deformation exceeded 0.25, the porosities gathered at the center of the billet, which may have caused larger defects. A numerical model for the reduction pretreatment was established to analyze the evolution behavior of porosity. The simulation results showed that the position with the maximum of strain moved toward the center of the billet as the reduction amount increased. At the position where the deformation was 0.20, the deformation would readily occur at the center, and the center strain was almost twice as much as the surface strain. The upper and lower surfaces of porosity were compressed to the center of the porosity in the thickness direction. The two ends of porosity were not stretched in the rolling direction. The closure index indicated that the deformation penetrated into the center would accelerate the deformation of porosity. The cross-sectional area of the porosity gradually decreased with the increase in the hydrostatic integration, which indicated that the hydrostatic integration could be used to assess the closure degree of porosity during the reduction pretreatment process. Both the closure index and the hydrostatic integration proved the effective role of the reduction pretreatment in the alleviation of porosity.