Study on the Preparation of Reinforced Copper-Clad Steel Wires by Continuous Cladding and Rapid Solidification.

Copper-clad steel wire is widely used in electric power, railroads, automobiles, and other fields. However, how to balance production efficiency and wire quality is still a challenging task. In this paper, a continuous cladding composite casting method for copper-clad steel wire is proposed based on the hot-dip plating process, which adopts a removable graphite crucible and S-shaped wiring to control the thickness and eccentricity of the cladding metal, and at the same time adopts connecting the electrical resistance furnace with a water-cooled crystallizer to achieve rapid solidification, which in turn strengthens the mechanical properties of the copper-clad wire and thus realizes the rapid and continuous preparation of copper-clad steel wires with good quality. In this study, the optimum process parameters, including drawing speed and pure copper melt temperature, were provided to reveal the mechanism of metallurgical bonding at the solid–liquid composite interface. The circumferential uniformity, mechanical properties, and electrical conductivity of the prepared copper-clad steel wires were tested. The growth mechanism of the copper-coated structure and the mechanism of rapid solidification to strengthen the mechanical properties are described. The results have been plotted in graphs to describe the properties and characteristics of the materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]