How is stainless steel flat bar made

Stainless steel flat bar can be used to form various stress components according to the different needs of the structure, and can also be used as a connection between components. It is widely used in various building structures and engineering structures, such as beams, bridges, transmission towers, lifting and transportation machinery, ships, industrial furnaces, reaction towers, container racks and warehouse shelves.

Stainless steel flat bar is used as bridge, frame, fence, transmission ship, vehicle and so on in construction engineering. The raw billet for producing stainless steel flat bar is low carbon square billet, and the finished stainless steel flat bar is delivered in hot rolling or cold rolling condition.

Usual 304 stainless steel flatbar processing technology mainly includes two kinds, namely hot rolling and cold rolling process. Different processing technology will also greatly affect the structure and properties of stainless steel flat bar, so an important factor to consider when choosing 304 stainless steel flat bar is processing technology. Next, we will introduce the advantages and disadvantages of these two processes.

First, the hot rolling process of stainless steel flat bar is introduced. Its advantage is that it can destroy the casting structure of stainless steel flat bar, so as to refine the grains of stainless steel materials, and also remove the defects of the microstructure, so that the metallographic structure of stainless steel flat bar is more compact, and improve the optimized mechanical properties. This optimization is mainly manifested in the rolling direction, so that stainless steel flat bar is no longer isotropic to a certain extent. The bubbles, cracks or looseness of stainless steel during pouring can be welded under the action of high temperature and pressure during hot rolling.

But there are also some shortcomings. After hot rolling, the non-metallic inclusions in stainless steel flat bar will also be compressed into thin sheets, resulting in delamination, which will weaken the tensile properties along the thickness direction of stainless steel flat bar. In addition, inhomogeneous cooling can also lead to residual stress which is not conducive to the deformation, stability and fatigue resistance of stainless steel materials.

In addition, the cold rolling process of stainless steel flat bar has the advantages of fast forming speed, high yield, not easy to damage the coating, and the material can be made into many cross-section patterns, which is suitable for the needs of diversified use conditions. Cold rolling can also cause large plastic deformation of stainless steel profiles, so as to enhance the yield point of stainless steel materials.

The main disadvantage of this process is that the cold rolled stainless steel flat bar is usually open section, which reduces the free torsional stiffness of the section. Moreover, materials are prone to torsion in bending and flexural-torsional buckling in compression. Cold-rolled stainless steel profiles have smaller wall thickness, and are not thicker at the corner where stainless steel joints, so they have poor ability to withstand local concentrated loads.