What is electrical steel?

Electrical steel, also known as silicon steel, is a carbon-silicon-iron alloy material with a silicon content between 0.5% and 4.5%. It is widely used in power, electronics, aerospace and industry due to its excellent magnetic permeability, low coercivity and high resistivity. The main applications of electrical steel include as core material for motors, generators and transformers.

The production process of electrical steel is complex and the manufacturing technology is strict. According to the different silicon content, electrical steel can be divided into low silicon wafers and high silicon wafers. Low silicon wafers have certain mechanical strength and are mainly used to manufacture motors; high silicon wafers have good magnetic properties but are brittle, and are mainly used to manufacture transformer cores. In addition, electrical steel can also be divided into hot-rolled and cold-rolled according to different production processes. Cold-rolled electrical steel is further divided into oriented electrical steel and non-oriented electrical steel according to the internal grain orientation.

Electrical steel is used in large quantities in magnetic materials and is also an important metal functional material for energy conservation. It has a small hysteresis area, resulting in low power loss per cycle, low core loss, and high permeability. The silicon content of commercial alloys of electrical steel is usually as high as 3.2%, but too high a silicon content can cause brittleness during cold rolling.

In summary, electrical steel is an important soft magnetic alloy with wide applications and important industrial value.