EUROPEAN STEEL TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATION DAYS 2017 - ESTAD 2017

Mechanical properties of steel wire rod are mainly influence by chemical composition and cooling rate of Morgan Stelmor cooling system, especially for high strength wire rod. Since the chemical composition will slightly fluctuate among different heats, it will accordingly cause the variation of mechanical properties. Although it can be compensated by cooling process adjustment manually,this requires high attention and human effort. Moreover, the changing of environmental temperature means the heat capacity variation of cooling agent, which can influence the mechanical properties. Especially in subtropical regions, the ambient temperature difference between summer and winter can reach 25℃, the variation of ambient temperature can influence the mechanical properties greatly. This study is to develop for dynamic cooling control model to obtain more uniform tensile strength of high strength steel wire rod. The method is to establish a mechanical properties prediction model of high carbon wire rod by big data analysis. The first step is to implement the relation between chemical composition, environment temperature and tensile strength by statistic method. Next step is to implant the dynamic control application in current production coordinating system, which can check the chemical composition and environmental temperature before production, then adjust the production process automatically to minimize the variation of mechanical properties. After the test production, the tensile strength is more stable and harmful microstructures like coarse pearlite, martensite are reduced or even eliminated. From the results of test production, the dynamic cooling control system is confirmed to be capable of reducing the variation of mechanical properties and microstructure effectively. Furthermore, this system can automatically modify the cooling practice by monitoring the chemical composition and environmental temperature. The benefits of this system are reducing the manual operation effort, reducing the variation of product mechanical properties, thus promoting product competitiveness and realizing the vision of intelligent manufacturing.