Environmental Conditions in the Reheating Furnace for High Quality Advanced High Strength Steels for Automobiles

It is well known that the development of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) is very important for the automotive industry in order to improve fuel efficiency and the reduction of material costs. However, it is particularly difficult to improve the surface quality of AHSS because the high amount of Si, Al, Mn and Ti etc. in AHSS promote selective oxidation, resulting in surface defects. The reheating process in the hot strip mill would cause severe oxidation because it is carried out at elevated temperatures under aggressive environments. In this study a reheating furnace simulator was developed to investigate oxidation phenomena in the reheating process. The environmental gas for the reheating furnace was made by burning coke oven gas with air in the simulator. The air/fuel ratio is precisely controlled by MFC. Ti oxides are easily formed on grain boundaries and Mn and Si oxides are usually formed in inner grains near the steel surface with a small round shape.