Application of Transformation Treatment to Commercial Low-Grade Electrical Steels under Different Processing Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper mainly presents characterizations of the textures for 2 800-grade electric steel samples under different heat treatments. Large amount of EBSD work has been performed. However, I feel many results are very qualitative and it is not easy to correlate the different microstructures with the processing routes. A major revision is required to improve this manuscript. More detailed comments are below:

 

- The introduction should be more concise and clearer.

- There must be a better way to present the EBSD results than the current way, which shows one microstructure after one sample/heat treatment ? Can you group the results and make more comparative discussions on that?

- Be careful with the term ‘transformation’. When you do not explicitly explain the transformation direction, this word is confusing.

- Explanations of 800-grade and 1300-grade electrical steels should be made for wider readership.

- Experimental section: a schematic diagram correlating the heat treatments to the sample number should be added.

- Table 1: what is the cooling rate to obtain Ar3 and Ar1 ? In addition, better to point out the phase transition temperatures are calculated under ortho-equilibrium conditions.

- Table 2: an estimation of the cooling rate for the ‘power off’ from the homogenization temperature to the temperature below Ar3 roughly by 100 degrees or equivalently a relaxation time should be added.

- Did you check any chemical banding of elements such as Si after high temperature annealing given the annealing time is as short as 5 min ?

- Line 155-158, sentences are very redundant.

- Figure 2b clearly shows a smaller grain size than Figure 2a, especially at the surface region. Why no comment on this in the text ?

- Line 162, mm or um ?

- It seems there is no comment/explanation of the red arrow in Figure 13. C4.

- Any attempts to plot the statistics of the amount of the sigma3 twin boundaries as a function of different heat treatments ? Many qualitative EBSD and ODFs have shown, but some discussions are neither convincing nor conclusive.

- Table 3, maximum and minimum Si content correspond to the critical points of the meniscus boundary lines, which sit at particular temperatures. So, the corresponding temperatures should also be added. Beside, line the question before, what equilibrium conditions for these phase diagrams ? ortho-equilibrium, para-equilibrium or local-equilibrium ?

- The authors self cited more than half (13/23). Are you sure you cannot find more relevant papers from others ? Please remove some of the citations from yourselves (at least 5).

 

- Typos and English errors:

Line 34: to -> of;

Line 74: labor-prepared;

Line 153: ho –> hot;

Line 167: fine -> finer;

Line 225: less -> few;

The English has to be extensively polished.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The current manuscript presents microstructure and texture evolution of electrical steel subjected to transformation treatment. The results are interesting and new. However. the primary concern on this manuscript is writing skill. Please see the comment below:

Manuscript Organization
1.  This work  does not show any performance of the studied electrical steel. Therefore, "800-grade" is not necessarily mentioned. No data in this work proves they are 800-grade electrical steel.

2. The final paragraph of Introduction should be re-organized or polished. Please directly show the purpose of this research, instead of asking questions at the first.

3. Transformation texture is not failed by your lab or industry. It is just because you are using different steels and different heating facilities. I don't think Sec. 4.1 is a good writing design. I encourage the authors to positively present the effect of Al and P on the formation of transformation texture.

4. Sec. 4.2 and Sec. 4.3 can be combined because they are conceptual paragraph.
 
Writing Flaws
5. There are many writing flaws or non-fluent writing. Please let this manuscript polished by native speakers.
ex. It needs a dash for "800-grade" and low-grade".

ex. 3.4 Transformation microstructure and grain orientations from starting hot rolled sheets. "from starting hot-rolled sheets" is not a fluent presentation.

ex. No question mark for "The objectives of this study are to find out whether the two 800 grade electrical steels are suitable for transformation treatment with {100} texture?"

Art Work
6. Please insert sample orientation for each IPF or EBSD data.

7.Please added angular scale for each ODF.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My pervious question about chemical banding was asking whether you found macro-segregation bands of elements such as Si along the rolling direction, which would be translated to different banded microstructures in the samples after annealing. Do you have any insight on this or have you ever checked on this ?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf