Glossary
Don’t know what a slab is? No problem. Here you’ll find explanations of specialist terms and abbreviations from the ThyssenKrupp Steel world.
- Alloy
- Steels containing additional metallic and/or nonmetallic elements (e.g. carbon, chromium, silicon).
- Top
- AOD converter
- Special converter for stainless, acid and heat-resistant steel, in which argon and oxygen are blown in to reduce the carbon content of the steel. AOD: Stands for Argon Oxygen Decarburization.
- Top
- Basic oxygen furnace/converter
- Refractory lined vessel for refining (converting) hot metal into steel. Top blowing of oxygen reduces the carbon content of the steel to levels as low as 0.1%.
- Top
- Blast furnace
- Facility for converting prepared iron ore into liquid iron (pig iron). It works on the counterflow principle: the charge (consisting of ore, burden, additives and coke) is introduced from the top – usually via a rotary chute. The hot blast flows in the opposite direction. The blast is pre-heated in stoves and injected into the furnace through tuyeres. Coke is used as reduction agent. Depending on charge and method of operation, different types of pig iron and even ferroalloys can be produced. A blast furnace remains in operation for many years (furnace campaign). The performance and cost efficiency of a blast furnace can be increased by larger furnace units, automatic charging, burden preparation, high blast temperatures, oxygen injection in the blast and pressurized charging. Blast furnace byproducts are blast furnace gas and blast furnace slag.
- Top
- BONDAL®
- Vibration-damping composite material
- Top
- Business unit
- Designation for a specific area of business activity within a segment at the ThyssenKrupp Group.
- Top
- Capital employed
- Interest-bearing invested capital
- Top
- Carbon steels
- EN 10020 – Definition and classification of grades of steel - distinguishes 1. Unalloyed, 2. Alloyed carbon steels.
- Top
- Casting rolling line
- Advanced production line based on thin slab technology for the production of hot strip from molten steel in one production step.
- Top
- Coating
- Metallic (zinc, nickel, aluminum) or organic (paint, plastic) coating or carbon steel flat products to provide corrosion protection.
- Top
- Coil
- Steel strip wound into a roll.
- Top
- Cold rolling
- Forming process carried out following hot rolling or strip casting. The material is reduced to a predefined thickness in the roll gap of the cold rolling mill by the application of high pressure between two rolls. Tandem cold rolling mills for carbon steel consist of up to five closely spaced mill stands. The difference versus hot rolling is the temperature. In cold rolling, the forming temperature is always below the recrystallization temperature, which makes subsequent annealing necessary.
- Top
- Cold strip
- Cold-reduced flat product in widths up to 2000 mm and thicknesses of 0.35 to approx. 4 mm in carbon steel. The advantages of cold-rolled strip over hot strip lie in better surface quality, lower tolerances and thinner sections.
- Top
- Conditioning
- Equipment and operations used to give steel products the required appearance after shaping (leveling, cutting, etc.).
- Top
- Continuous casting
- Process for producing slabs from molten steel. The steel is cast via a tundish into a cooled mold which determines the dimensions (width, thickness) of the slab. The cast strand emerges from the mold with a solidified skin and is guided by rolls through a cooling section before being cut by torches into required slab lengths
- Top
- Continuous hot-rolled plate
- Plate cut from wide hot strip, mainly in thickness up to 15 (max. 20) mm.
- Top
- CRM
- Customer Relationship Management is not a software program but a holistic business philosophy. The aim of CRM is to create added value for both customers and suppliers on the basis of long-term business relationships. The customer relationship is intensified at all process levels and tailored to the customer in order to strengthen customer loyalty and raise relationship exit barriers.
- Top
- Crude steel
- Can be in liquid or solid form. In both cases it is a raw product. In the liquid condition it is used for ingot teeming, continuous casting or cast steel production.
- Top
- Cut-to-length line
- Used to cut sheets from strip and to shear slit strip (slit strip in cut lengths). In between are straightening and leveling units. The cut-to-length line is usually arranged parallel to the slitting line.
- Top
- Downstream activities
- Processing steps carried out on flat steel to add value, e.g. coating, steel service center processing or tailoring.
- Top
- Ductility
- The work stored by forming or another kind of energy conversion until fracture.
- Top
- e-business
- Information sharing, communication and transactions between suppliers, manufacturers or customers via the internet.
- Top
- EBIT
- Earnings before interest and taxes
- Top
- EBITDA
- Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization
- Top
- Electric furnace steel
- Steel produced in an electric arc or induction furnace. The operation of electric furnaces allows the production of chemically resistant steels, tool steels, high-speed steels, special engineering, aerospace and nuclear steels as well as magnet materials.
- Top
- Finishing
- Operations such as straightening, cutting, etc. designed to give steel products their desired appearance after shaping
- Top
- Heavy plate
- Plate with a thickness of 3 mm and more. Heavy plate is supplied in all alloyed and unalloyed steel grades.
- Top
- Hot dip coating
- In this process, sheet or strip is coated by immersing it in a bath of molten metal (e.g. zinc, tin, aluminum, lead or alloys thereof). Dimensional standard EN 10143.
- Top
- Hot rolling
- Forming method. Rolling at high temperatures permits large thickness reductions, allowing the forming of slabs into thin strip.
- Top
- Hot strip
- Hot rolled product with a rectangular cross section and a width of at least 600 mm which is wound into accurate coils directly after rolling. Produced on (wide) hot strip mills, mainly continuously in thicknesses from 1.5 to 25.0 mm and widths up to 2,000 mm. Hot strip is used as a starting material for sheet, plate and cold rolled strip.
- Top
- Hot strip mill
- Facility for the production of wide hot strip. Fully continuous lines consist of one or more roughing stands and a finishing train with seven finishing stands.
- Top
- Hot-rolled sheet
- Sheet cut from hot-rolled wide strip, usually with a thickness of 15 (max. 20) mm.
- Top
- Hot-rolled wide strip
- Hot-rolled steel strip with a width of >600 mm that is rolled directly from slabs in a semi- or completely continuous hot strip mill or - in the case of pure stainless products - in separate Steckel mills. Hot-rolled strips can be used for specific applications and especially as starting material for the cold-rolling process.
- Top
- Hydroforming
- Innovative forming method in which pressurized fluid is used to form metal in a closed die. It allows the production of extremely complex shapes from different starting materials, including tubes.
- Top
- Multi-processing line
- A unit that allows several processing steps to be combined that would otherwise be carried out on separate units with conventional production technology.
- Top
- Nickel-base alloys
- A collective term for a series of alloys made of nickel and other metals (Cu, Cr, Fe, Mo) that stand out for their particularly high heat and/or corrosion resistance. Such alloys are available on the market under a variety of brand names.
- Top
- Pig iron (hot metal)
- According to EN 10 001 an alloy of iron and more than 2% C. It may also contain other elements within certain limits. (Mn < 30, Si < 8 %, P < 3 %, Cr < 10 %, others < 10 %). Pig iron is processed into steel or cast iron. Iron for steelmaking can be divided into low-phosphorus and high-phosphorus grades.
- Top
- Plate
- Flat steel in gauges of 3 mm and more. Plate is supplied in all alloyed and unalloyed steel grades.
- Top
- Precision strip
- Cold-rolled strip with an ideal thickness of between 0.01 and 0.4 mm and a maximum width of 650 mm and/or which fulfill special demands in terms of strength or edge quality, as well as displaying a high degree of dimensional accuracy.
- Top
- Primer
- Used to enhance adhesion between steel and coating material. Primers provide excellent corrosion protection and a base coat for subsequent paint coats.
- Top
- PVD/CVD
- Physical or Chemical Vapor Deposition of metallic, organic or inorganic coatings.
- Top
- Quarto (four-high) mill
- Facility for making heavy plate with a quarto (four-high) mill.
- Top
- Recycling
- Returning a material or component to the production cycle to make a new end product. Through recycling, scrap becomes a raw material for steel production. Steel is a particularly environmentally friendly material due to its hundred percent recyclability with no loss of quality. Recyclability is an important material property.
- Top
- ReflectionsOne®
- Color designer Friedrich Ernst v. Garnier has developed a new spectrum of colors for building with steel for ThyssenKrupp Steel. Numerous major buildings worldwide already use the new colors.
- Top
- Reversing mill
- Mill stand which forms material as it reciprocates between adjustable rolls. Consists of one or two stands, at least one of which carries out several reversing passes.
- Top
- ROCE
- Return on capital employed
- Top
- Scale
- Layer of oxide which forms on the surface of steel during annealing, rolling or forging. A scale coating consists of several oxidation layers which differ chemically (rolling scale).
- Top
- Secondary steelmaking
- or ladle metallurgy is the general heading for methods used for oxide removal, degassing, composition control, inclusion morphology and improving the cleanliness of steel. Many of these processes are carried out in vacuum conditions.
- Top
- SECURE®
- Brand name for a group of materials used for ballistic protection in civilian applications.
- Top
- Segment
- Designation for the organizational level between Corporate Center and business units at the ThyssenKrupp Group.
- Top
- Sendzimir mill
- Multi-roll mill (20 rolls at ThyssenKrupp Stainless) for cold rolling wide steel strips - named after its inventor, Professor Tadeusz Sendzimir. The two thin work rolls are held by numerous back-up rolls in a housing. The small diameter of the work rolls together with the back-up rolls makes it possible to achieve great thickness reductions and closer tolerances, even with materials that are difficult to form.
- Top
- SFAS
- Statement of Financial Accounting Standards
- Top
- Sheet
- Flat product in thicknesses from 0.35 to less than 3.00 mm: Cold-rolled flat products of mild or high-strength steels for cold forming. Usually metallic or organic coated.
- Top
- Simultaneous and concurrent engineering
- Close technical cooperation with the automobile industry for material- and production-integrated body development.
- Top
- Sinter plant
- Here, the originally fine-grained iron ore is sintered with various additives, coke, fluxes, etc. "Sintering" is a continuous process in which ore fines are aggregated into lumps on a sinter belt for charging into the blast furnace. In their original condition ore fines would choke the blast furnace.
- Top
- Slab
- Compact block of crude steel, product of the casting process in the melt shop, used as a starting material in the rolling mills to produce hot strip or quarto plate.
- Top
- Slag
- In every melting process oxidic materials are created which due to their lower specific gravity float on the surface of the molten iron or steel. Undesirable elements separated from the iron oxide are passed into the slag. When solidified, slag is glass or stone-like. Steel mill slag is a valuable material: Blast furnace slags are used in the production of cement (iron portland and blast furnace cement), bricks, pumice, lime, roadbuilding materials, railway ballast and mineral wool. Finely ground phosphorus-containing converter slag is a valuable fertilizer.
- Top
- Slit strip
- Hot or cold rolled wide strip (wider than 600 mm), cut lengthways into widths of less than 600 mm on slitting lines. Delivered in coils or cut lengths. Slitting is also used for coated wide strip.
- Top
- Soft-magnetic steels
- Offer easy magnetization, high permeability and low reversal losses. Microstructure should have few lattice defects and internal stresses to allow Bloch wall movements. Unalloyed or low-allow grades are used in power engineering. Dynamo and transformer sheets are alloyed with Si to reduce eddy current losses.
- Top
- Special structural steels
- Structural steels displaying quality properties exceeding the requirements of standards.
- Top
- Steel service centers
- Steel service centers are modern efficient processing operations offering a wide range of products and service capabilities including hot and cold rolled, coated slit strip, sheet and blanks in carbon and stainless steel. Steel service centers are an important link between rollers and steel fabricators.
- Top
- Strip casting (also known as thin strip casting)
- A technology employed at ThyssenKrupp that involves molten steel being cast between two rotating rolls and then hardened into a hot rolled strip. Elimination of the conventional hot-rolling stage saves an entire process step.
- Top
- Supply chain management
- Supply chain management analyzes the entire supply chain of a company with the aim of improving the flow of information and materials between internal and external suppliers, production areas, distributors and customers.
- Top
- Sustainability
- Holistic approach emphasizing the equal weighting of economic, social and ecological goals.
- Top
- Tailored Blank
- Blank made of individual sheets of same or different grade, thickness or coating joined together e.g. by laser welding. Tailored blanks are formable and are produced according to specific customer requirements.
- Top
- Tandem mill
- Line in which mill stands are arranged one after the other (tandem layout). Tandem cold rolling mills generally consist of two to five closely spaced two-high, four-high or six-high stands through which strip passes one or more times.
- Top
- Tensile strength
- Maximum point of the stress-strain curve, determined by tensile testing as the quotient of maximum tensile stress and the original cross section of the specimen. Unit of measurement: N/mm².
- Top
- ThyssenKrupp Steel best
- Program to enhance efficiency in all areas of the company.
Best stands for “business excellence in service and technology”. - Top
- Tinplate
- Tin-coated cold rolled sheet in nominal thicknesses from 0.17 to 0.49 mm, double reduced tinplate from 0.14 to 0.29 mm in mild unalloyed steel to EN 10203. The tin is deposited electrolytically on one or both sides in the same or different coating thicknesses ("differential coating"). Coating weights staggered from 1.0 to 10 g/m² per side. An additional paint coat can enhance corrosion resistance. Used mostly in the packaging industry (with high recycling rates!), also for household goods and toys. Technical delivery conditions in DIN 10205.
- Top
- Titanium
- Chemical element (symbol Ti), light metal. Thanks to its high strength, low density and high corrosion resistance, titanium and its alloys are valuable in process equipment and aircraft manufacture. Titanium is a widely used alloying metal, e.g. for stabilized steels and high-strength structural steels.
- Top
- ULSAB
- Ultra-Light-Steel-Auto-Body. The ULSAB-AVC (Advanced Vehicle Concepts) program is an important part of the international steel industry’s constant efforts to secure the future of steels as the first choice material for auto manufacturers.
- Top
- US GAAP
- United States accounting rules;
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. - Top
- Vacuum degassing facility
- Facility for the secondary treatment of steel under strongly reduced pressure, capable of achieving high cleanliness, low gas contents and close composition tolerances, allowing high quality requirements to be met.
- Top
- VIM facility
- Vacuum Induction Melting facility in which materials can be remelted in a closed atmosphere. This technology makes it possible to meet extreme cleanliness requirements.
- Top
- XABO®
- Brand name for a group of ultra-high strength steel grades for water-quenched sheet.
- Top
- XAR®
- Brand name for a group of hard, wear-resistant steel grades for sheet.
- Top