Cropping Billets with Low Aspect Ratios

Summary

Fractureless cropping and high speed cropping, two successful innovations for superior quality billets, are based on completely opposite principles. In the former, fracture is suppressed through axial compressive pressure, whereas the success of the latter process lies in inducing cracks within a very narrow zone. However, both these techniques have considerable limitations with regard to the production of relatively short billets in less ductile materials.

The present paper shows that certain features of the above mentioned techniques can be combined to produce good quality, short billets. In particular, a combination of high cropping speeds and relatively low compressive pressure can produce very short billets in steels.