Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The steel industry can directly contribute to establish sustainable economic development that addresses environmental concerns and maintains a sound ecology by developing advanced high strength steels. A number of these novel steels will be used as hot-rolled sheet for applications in the automotive and construction industries. The superior properties of these steels that will lead to weight savings are primarily related to the complex microstructures which form as a result of phase transformation during cooling on the run-out table of a hot strip mill. For this purpose, novel cooling strategies have to be employed with coiling at lower temperatures than for conventional steels. To facilitate the process development in this regard it is crucial to have in-depth knowledge on heat transfer on the run-out table. A unique pilot scale run-out table test rig is located at the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory of the University of British Columbia. The test rig allows the study of heat transfer on moving test plates under conditions that replicate industrial run-out table cooling. It is proposed to form a run-out table user group with a consortium of Canadian steel companies to advance heat transfer knowledge and modelling of run-out table cooling for steels with novel properties.