Recent advances in inclusions and central segregation control technology in tyre cord steel and saw wire steel

ABSTRACT

Tyre cord wires and steel saw wires represent typical precision pearlitic steel wire rods. Reducing the rate of wire breaking is one of the most concerning problems in metallurgy. This paper surveys the technical progress in the control of inclusions and central segregation in tyre cord steel wires and saw wire steel in the last 20 years, including the control of the [Al]s content in steel, selection of better refractories, deletion of the VD process, developing of new kinds of refining slag system, optimize the structure of tundish, control of Ti-containing inclusions, feeding steel trip into a mould, electromagnetic stirring technology, soft reduction technology at the solidification end of continuous casting slab, and the control of billet size. Finally, the unresolved issues that should be studied in the next 10 years have been formulated.

KEYWORDS:

• Tyre cord steel
• saw wire steel
• refractory
• inclusion control
• central segregation

Acknowledgements

Author's contribution: Conceptualization, C.Y. Chen; writing—original draft preparation, C.Y. Chen and M.Sun; resources, L. Wang and Z. H. Jiang; writing—review and editing, M.Sun. and X.Q.Chen; software, X.Q.Chen; project administration, Y. Li. and Z. H. Jiang. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2016YFB0300105].