Behaviour of copper during the high temperature oxidation of steels produced by the electric furnace route

Abstract

The surface quality of hot rolled low-carbon steels may be affected by their copper content when it exceeds 0.3% by weight. At high temperature (more than 1200 °C), a large part of the non oxidized copper is occluded into the primary scale and hot shortness phenomenon is prevented. At lower temperature (around 1000 °C), surface cracking may occur because Cu enrichment at the scale/steel interface cannot be avoided. Then the running risk depends on time and respective contents in Cu, Ni and Sn.