Columnar grain growth in non-oriented electrical steels

Decarburising annealing in the two-phase region is a known method to provide columnar grain growth in silicon non-oriented electrical steel that can improve magnetic properties. This method includes long-term preliminary annealing in vacuum and subsequent decarburising annealing in a wet hydrogen atmosphere (J. Mater. Eng. Perform. 5 (1996) 316). In the present paper an alternative method to produce the columnar microstructure in low and medium silicon non-oriented electrical steel without preliminary vacuum annealing is described. The influence of applied annealing temperature regimes and atmospheres on the development of the material microstructure are studied under the conditions of industrial continuous annealing. The dependence of the final material texture on the aforementioned conditions is presented. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.