Currently, the non-oriented (NO) iron-silicon steels are extensively used as the core materials in various electrical devises due to excellent combination of their mechanical and soft magnetic properties. The present study introduces a fairly innovative technological approach applicable for fully finished NO electrical steel before punching the laminations. It is based on specific mechanical processing by bending and rolling in combination with subsequent annealing under dynamic heating conditions. It has been revealed that the proposed unconventional treatment clearly led to effective improvement of the steel magnetic properties thanks to its beneficial effects involving additional grain growth with appropriate crystallographic orientation and residual stress relief. The philosophy of the proposed processing was based on employing the phenomena of selective grain growth by strain-induced grain boundary migration and a steep temperature gradient through the cross-section of heat treated specimens at dynamic heating conditions. The stored deformation energy necessary for the grain growth was provided by plastic deformation induced within the studied specimens during the bending and rolling process. The magnetic measurements clearly show that the specimens treated according to our approach exhibited more than 17% decrease in watt losses in comparison with the specimens treated by conventional heat treatment leading only to stress relief without additional grain growth.
Keywords: bending deformation; crystallographic texture; electrical steel; magnetic losses.