Significant effect of as-cast microstructure on texture evolution and magnetic properties of strip cast non-oriented silicon steel

In this study, two types of as-cast microstructure produced by strip casting were cold rolled and annealed to investigate the effect of initial microstructure on the textural evolution and magnetic properties of non-oriented silicon steel. The results indicated that the cold-rolled sheets of coarse-grained strip with pronounced {100} components exhibited stronger λ fiber (〈100〉//ND) and weaker γ fiber (〈111〉//ND) texture as composed to the fine-grained strip with strong Goss ({110}〈001〉) texture. After annealing, the former was dominated by η fiber (〈001〉//RD) texture with a peak at {110}〈001〉 orientation, while the latter consisted of strong {111}〈112〉 and relatively weak {110}〈001〉 texture. In addition, a number of precipitates of size ∼30–150 nm restricted the grain growth during annealing, resulting in recrystallization of grain size of ∼46 μm in the coarse-grained specimen and ∼41 μm in the fine-grained specimen. Ultimately, higher magnetic induction (∼1.72 T) and lower core loss (∼4.04 W/kg) were obtained in the final annealed sheets of coarse-grained strip with strong {100} texture.