The capital letters JR for the qualities with specified impact properties at room temperature, the characters J0

for the qualities with specified impact properties at 0 °C and the characters J2 or K2 for the qualities with
specified impact properties at -20 °C;
+ AR - As rolled
+ N – Normalized Steel
+ M – Thermo mechanically treated
+ Q – Quenching
BS EN 10025 (Plates & sections)*
Part 1 – General Delivery conditions
Part 2 - Non alloy structural steels
Part 3 - Fine grain structural steels (Normalised / normalised rolled)
Part 4 - Fine grain structural steels (Thermomechanically rolled)
Part 5 - Weathering steels
Part 6 - Quenched & tempered steels

BS EN 10210 (Structural hollow sections)

BS EN 10225 Weldable structural steels for fixed offshore structures — Technical delivery conditions

For Ultra sonic test:

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN ISO 10893-10:2011 (detection of longitudinal

and/or transverse Imperfections). It supersedes BS EN 10246-6:2000 and BS EN 10246-7:2005, which
are withdrawn.

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN ISO 10893-8:2011 (For laminar imperfections). It
supersedes BS EN 10246-14:2000, BS EN 10246-16:2000, and BS EN 10246-17:2000, which are
withdrawn.
VACUUM DEGASSING

Depending on the steel grades to be produced, various

after treatment methods and process combinations can
now-a-days be applied to modern steel making shops.
For some grades of steel vacuum treatment has to be
given to the steel to achieve strict quality parameters.
Various processes have been developed using
vacuum.

Application of Vacuum Treatment to Steel Grades

:

Ball Bearing Grades were the first grades for which

the vacuum treatment has been successfully used.
Today many manufacturers specify vacuum treatment
for these grades. To an increasing extent vacuum
treatment has been used for production of low alloy
and unalloyed high quality with the use of these
treatment units.
Another field is the production of silicon grades. Carbon contents in the melt, of about 0.01%, permit
a reduction of the annealing times in the continuous annealing furnace to about one half, which results
in considerable cost savings. The improvement of the degree of cleanliness at the same time results in
an improvement of the magnetic properties. For grades with a higher Si content, reladling into a
second ladle, which was often required for homogenization, is avoided by adding the silicon through
the degassing vessel. It can generally be noted that today steels for silicon grades are produced largely
with the use of vacuum treatment.

The greatly increased quality requirements for rail steels can also be met with vacuum treatment. For
these grades, with higher strength requirements and thereby higher manganese contents, the hydrogen
content has to be reduced, in order to avoid slow cooling to prevent flakes. The vacuum treatment
enables one to maintain the required degree of cleanliness and also performs corrections of analysis.

The vacuum treatment gives rise to the economical production of a great number of steel
grades.But efforts have always been made to reduce the cost for this additional treatment by a simpler
treatment, especially in those cases in which the equipment could only be used at a low capacity, or
where the temperature losses during the treatment become critical for the tapping temperatures of the
steel. Temperature losses for a vacuum treatment are in the range of 20-50 Deg. C.

The considerations have been of particular importance where continuous casting has been
increasingly introduced. A vacuum treatment should be an ideal preparatory treatment for many
grades to be cast in a continuous casting machine. However, this requires higher teeming temperature
which make it particularly problematic to compensate for the additional temperature losses during
vacuum treatment.

VACUUM DEGASSING PROCESSES :

Vacuum degassing is practiced in the steel industry for several purposes. They are : -

a. to remove hydrogen
b. to improve cleanliness by removing part of the oxygen
c. to produce steel of low carbon content ( < 0.03%)
d. to produce steels to close chemical composition ranges (including deoxidizers), and
e. to control pouring temperatures, especially for continuous casting operations.

Vacuum degassing processes, in the broadest sense, refer to the exposure of molten steel to a low-
pressure environment to remove gases (chiefly hydrogen and oxygen) from the steel. The
effectiveness of any vacuum degassing operation depends upon the surface area of liquid steel that is
exposed to low pressure. The mechanisms of hydrogen and oxygen removal from liquid steel are
related directly to surface area.

Hydrogen removal is a diffusion and partial pressure phenomenon. Oxygen removal is a function of
chemical reaction of oxygen with carbon and the partial pressure of carbon monoxide.

The processes by which a degassing treatment is accomplished also achieve a host of other objectives
including : composition and temperature control; decarburization; micro cleanliness; and
inclusion morphology. Under the vacuum degassing treatments three processes which primarily use
this treatment are stream degassing, recalculation degassing and vacuum degassing in the ladle.

Vacuum Degassing
Definition - What does Vacuum Degassing mean?
Vacuum degassing is a technique of removing dissolved gas from a liquid solution by lowering the
pressure inside a vessel containing the solution. Vacuum degassing is often utilized in:

 Water treatment
 Laboratory testing
 Soil purification

Vacuum degassing is the only way to make certain grades of steel that are particularly useful in the
automotive, aerospace and railroad industries.

This process is also utilized for analyzing a material under controlled conditions including:

 Air pressure
 Temperature
 Humidity
  Altitude
 Electromagnetic radiation
 Microwave radiation

Corrosionpedia explains Vacuum Degassing

During the production process, a product’s metal components can become infused with excess
amounts of gases. As a result, unwanted imperfections and side effects can impact the integrity or
performance of the metal.

Vacuum degassing processes involve the exposure of molten steel to a low-pressure environment to
remove gases (chiefly hydrogen and oxygen). The effectiveness of any vacuum degassing operation
depends upon the surface area of liquid metal that is exposed to low pressure. This process is
typically performed in a specially designed chamber known as a vacuum degasser.

The reduced pressure inside the vessel or chamber causes the gas to become less soluble and
separate from the liquefied material. After the vacuum degassing process is complete, the gas is
removed from the vessel, and the pressure is returned to normal.

Vacuum degassing to remove carbon not only reduces imperfections, but also makes metals more
ductile, or easily shaped and formed through cold metalworking.

Vacuum degassing is practiced in the steel industry for purposes such as:

 Removing hydrogen
 Improving cleanliness by removing oxygen
 Producing steel with low carbon content ( < 0.03%)
 Producing steels with close chemical composition ranges (including deoxidizers)
 Controlling pouring temperatures, especially for continuous casting operations

Degassing of Steel
Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideo
logically biased.

Degassing of Steel

the removal of gases from liquid steel.

Gases have a harmful effect on the mechanical and physical properties of steel. It was only in the early 1
950’s that theproblem of producing steel with minimum gas content was solved through the development
of a method of vacuum treatmentof liquid steel in the ladle, before pouring. The method was proposed by
the Soviet scientists A. M. Samarin and L. M. Novikin 1940. It was first tried industrially in the USSR in 19
52 at the Enakievskii metallurgical plant, and in 1954 in the FederalRepublic of Germany, at the Bochume
r Verein, a method of degassing a flow of metal was tried. The industrial introduction ofthe ladle method o
f vacuum treatment was first made in the USSR in 1955. These labors initiated a new trend, vacuummetal
lurgy outside the furnace. By the end of the 1950’s other kinds of vacuum treatment of steel outside the fu
rnace (thebatch and circulation methods) had been developed; along with the ladle method, they came to
be extensively applied in manycountries.

The theoretical basis of the vacuum processes conducted outside the furnace is an increase of the deoxid
ation capacity ofcarbon and a decrease in the solubility of hydrogen and nitrogen by lowering the partial p
ressures of CO, H2, and N2. In thelate 1960’s, an important trend in the development of vacuum processe
s outside the furnace was the vacuum treatment ofordinary rimmed steel, which made it possible to solve
the complex problem of the production of low-
carbon steel. Withvacuum treatment of unscavenged steel outside the furnace, the deoxidizing capacity o
f the carbon is raised by a factor of 10-20. Under such conditions it is possible to make a low-
carbon steel with a very low oxygen content. Metals with such a lowcarbon and oxygen content have very
high plastic properties, and bars and slabs cast in continuous steel casting plants are ofdense and homo
geneous structure. Vacuum processes that are performed outside the furnace considerably raise the tech
nicaland economic indexes of metallurgical production by reducing the length of the smelting process by
10-
20 percent, reducingthe consumption of deoxidant and alloying additives by up to 30 percent, and increas
ing the yield and improving the quality ofusable steel, with low expenses for the construction and operatio
n of vacuum installations. In addition, the useful life ofarticles made from vacuum-
treated steel is prolonged. In 1970 there were about 400 plants operating with vacuum treatment ofsteel o
utside the furnace.