2. Heavy plate rolling

2.1 Geometric appearance

Three types of products are heat-processed:

• ingots, nowadays reserved for small quantities of special steels or very thick products;

• slabs laminated by slabbing;

• continuous-casting slabs (the economic advantages of this process tend to outweigh those of the previous two).

The mass of steel to be used is calculated on the basis of the mass of sheet metal to be delivered and the various losses or rejects occurring during manufacture (figure 2 ).