Effect of Final Rolling Temperature on Microstructure, Properties and Texture of Hot Rolled Strip by New Endless Rolled Line

Donghua steel continuous casting-rolling (DSCCR) line is a new endless rolling line in which tunnel heating furnace is added before and after roughing mills to change the temperature field of slab and intermediate slab, but this change will affect the microstructure and properties of hot rolled plate. Therefore, the microstructure evolution, mechanical properties, texture analysis, hole expanding and earing test of 2.0 mm thick hot rolled plate produced by DSCCR line at different final rolling temperature of 860°C, 840°C and 820°C are studied. The results show that with the decrease of final rolling temperature, there is an obvious layered microstructure distribution along the thickness direction, and the surface coarse grain area gradually expands inward, at the same time the morphology of cementite also changed from large multi domain lamellar pearlite and long rod cementite to small single domain lamellar pearlite and short rod cementite. The engineering stress-strain curves have discontinuous yield with the yield elongation of 4-5% and the elongations are more than 35%. EBSD analysis shows that small angle grain boundaries and deformed grains increase significantly with the decrease of final rolling temperature, and are mainly distributed in fine grain area. Hole expanding and earing tests show that with the decrease of final rolling temperature, the earing performance decreased but the limiting hole expanding ratio is similar.