This invention discloses a method for controlling the uniformity of gear steel
microstructure, including hot
metal desulfurization and
vanadium extraction, semi-steel converter
smelting, LF refining, RH refining, and
continuous casting processes. The method controls the solidification process of the
molten steel in the
molten pool during
continuous casting, ensuring solidification is completed within a 1 / 4 arc-shaped region of the slab, and implementing a specified cooling and solidification control process. This method effectively improves the macroscopic solute concentration uniformity in all directions of the cross-section of the gear steel
continuous casting slab, improves the regional symmetry of the solidified
microstructure, and promotes more uniform phase transformation and
stress distribution in the gear
microstructure during gear
processing and subsequent heat treatment. The range of distance between the equiaxed
crystal zone boundary and the slab surface is reduced from 30-40 mm to 10-15 mm. After rolling into a
round bar, the range of distance between the equiaxed
crystal trace zone boundary and the
round bar surface is controlled to ≤5 mm, and the range of solute segregation (circumferential) at the same radial distance from the surface of the
round bar is ≤0.02. The resulting gear steel grain size stabilizes from grade 6.0-7.0 to grade 7.0.