Metallurgy of rolled plate on continuous mills

Metallurgical products obtained by rolling fall into two main categories:

• long products (wires, bars, rails, sections, etc.), so called because their width and thickness are of the same order of magnitude, and smaller than their length. These products are rolled on mills equipped with grooved rolls or rollers;

• flat products (heavy plate, hot-rolled and cold-rolled thin plate, tinplate, etc.), which are thinner than other dimensions and are rolled between cylinders with substantially straight generatrices. The present study focuses on the latter.

Non-alloyed and low-alloyed extra-soft steels are the main raw materials used in the manufacture of flat products. It is therefore in iron metallurgy that we will look for examples likely to illustrate the metallurgical phenomena encountered during sheet manufacturing, but many of these phenomena are very similar, in their mechanisms, to those characterizing non-ferrous metal sheets.