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Fe-6.5wt%Si steel is an excellent soft magnetic material due to the near-zero magnetostriction and low core losses. In this study, a 0.3 mm-thick grain-oriented 6.5wt%Si steel sheet was produced by a novel strip casting and two-stage rolling. The microstructure and texture evolution were investigated with a special emphasis on the nucleation and growth of Goss grains. The thin normalized strip was composed of large columnar grains and small equiaxed grains. During intermediate annealing, Goss grains nucleated in the shear bands of the deformed //ND grains, and the deformed {111} grains provided most of the nucleation sites. After primary annealing, the Goss grains distributed across the entire thickness, which was different from the conventional rolling route. The fraction of high-angle boundaries (20°-45°) surrounding the Goss grains was apparently higher than those of the matrix grains, which promoted the abnormal growth of the Goss grains during secondary recrystallization.

A Fe-1.3% Si non-oriented silicon steel strip was produced by twin-roll strip casting process, and subsequently treated with cold rolling and annealing. The effect of heating rates on the recrystallization and precipitation behavior of second phase particles (AlN and MnS) was investigated by MMS-200 thermal mechanical simulator. It was found that the recrystallization area fraction decreased obviously with the increase of heating rate. At the heating rate of 5 °C/s, the recrystallization rate gradually decreased with the extension of holding time, but it increased at the rapid heating rates. The particle’s sizes mainly concentrated in 50~200 nm at the heating rate of 5 °C/s during annealing. The number of particles under 50nm increased gradually and the number of precipitates between 50~400 nm reduced significantly when the heating rate was increased to 50~300 °C/s. The results indicated that the rapid heating rate could refine the size of precipitates and decrease the number of particles above 50nm.