4. Cold-rolled sheets

4.1 Recent developments in grades and manufacturing processes

The technical and economic advantages of continuous steel casting over conventional ingot casting led, of necessity, to the disappearance of effervescent steels and the widespread use of aluminum-quenched steels.

In the recent past, ordinary steels were annealed exclusively by stacking coils, placing them under a bell and heating them in a protective atmosphere: this is base annealing.

On the other hand, tinplate, stainless steels and steels with magnetic properties have long been annealed by heating a strip on the fly through a furnace: this is continuous annealing. This technique, which has been extended to all steels over the last twenty years or so, has the added advantage...