It is well known that, at the laboratory scale, lubricated ferrite rolling in hot-rolling is effective for developing the {111} texture. In order to apply this metallurgical principle to an industrial scale mill, Kawasaki Steel Corp. developed the endless hot-rolling process at Chiba Works, making it possible to employ heavily lubricated hot-roling over the full length of hot bands with stable operation. Hot band having the {111} texture, which is obtained in this manner, exhibits extremely high Lankford value (r-value) of 3.0 after cold-rolling and annealing. The newly developed steel sheet shows excellent drawability compared to that of conventional EDDQ steels. The new steel is expected to be applied mainly in automotive parts which are subjected to complex and heavy press deformation.
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