On-line sensor fulfilling its job

Citation

(2002), "On-line sensor fulfilling its job", Sensor Review, Vol. 22 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2002.08722cab.009

On-line sensor fulfilling its job

On-line sensor fulfilling its jobKeywords: Steel, Inspection, Sensors

As a part of continuing efforts to meet customers' diverse requirements, at the same time keeping its expenses down, Japan's third largest steel enterprise, Kawasaki Steel Corporation, reports "anticipated success for a late development in ongoing research and development activity". This is a sensing device that precisely tracks the hot-rolled steel's transformation behaviour as it moves on, via the cooling zone of the runout table to the hot-strip mill's coiler.

Pointing out that: "this is the first of its kind", the Japanese firm, located at Nakamachi-dori, Chuo-ku, Kobe City in Hyogo prefecture in central Japan, says the device consists of an alternating-current exciter, a detector head, which is essentially a set of two search coils, and an exciter/coil, amplifiers and volt meters that are attached to each search coil, and a computer unit. This on-line sensor began life in experimental use at a hot-strip mill at Kawasaki's major Mizushima Works on the nation's Seto Naikai ("Inland Sea"), which for some time now has been developing ways by which it can be hooked up to the runout table's controlling-cooling mechanism.

A company technician in the R&D sector has this to say: "the primary function at the outset was the design of the instrument to ensure the uniformity of the desired mechanical properties throughout the hot rolled coils, but since that start, we have been focusing mostly on the desired mechanical properties throughout the hot-rolled coils and between the coils, but", he emphasised, "the benefits are now going on far beyond that".

He observed that the sensor makes it much easier to obtain high-quality products, such as "a dual-phase steel", and for another "it is possible to turn out slabs to the same chemistry so as to cash in on the economies of volume production and then convert them into a variety of hot-rolled steels tailored in properties exactly to our customers' diverse requirements".

The critical factor that determines the hot-rolled steel's mechanical properties and the final shape "is the way", the technician explained, "the controlled cooling is provided on the runout table, after the steel strip leaves the mill's finishing stand".