Cleaner steel. Stronger gears.
Gear life depends on many factors, and steel cleanness is a critical one for improving performance. Our production process yields less oxide particles in our steel, which enhances fatigue strength and power density.
Capabilities
Ultrapremium Technology
Our specialized assets and operating practices help us produce the cleanest air-melt steel using UltrapremiumTM process technology and certified cleanness testing.
Improved fatigue life and power density start with clean steel. Applying our best practices and our unique assets to almost any grade of steel dramatically lowers oxide inclusions, in comparison to competing air-melt steelmaking processes. The result: optimum performance and longer life of service at a lower cost than re-melted steels. After the manufacturing process is complete, we require thorough testing to ensure Ultrapremium quality.
Oxide inclusions contribute to early failure in engineered components that are subjected to regular stress and wear, like gears and bearings. The Ultrapremium process reduces the size and concentration of oxide inclusions in steel, which therefore contributes to:
- A reduction in size and weight requirement at current power levels
- An increase in power capacity at current size
- Improved durability and fatigue life performance
Measuring Up: Ultrapremium-certified
When performance counts, Metallus Ultrapremium technology delivers improved fatigue life and power density.
Traditional steel cleanness measurements don’t provide sufficient information that directly correlates with expected steel life. Traditional measurements do not consider enough area to accurately provide the statistical detail of whether critically sized inclusions are present. Essentially, traditional methods likely understate the potential flaws that can reduce fatigue performance.
In contrast, our Ultrapremium process requires certified results, so we use an automated scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) capability. These measurements ensure a cleaner steel and more accurate validation of results via a rapid inspection of a larger area – and thus a more accurate understanding of the overall inclusion population. In addition to peace of mind, that means more meaningful cleanness metrics relevant to component design, allowing customers to easily determine the probability of critically sized inclusions. Some of these important metrics include:
- Average concentration of oxide inclusions greater than 10 and 20 microns in size
- Average concentration of oxide stringers greater than 100 and 200 microns in length
- Maximum likely-sized inclusion
Customer applications illustrate the benefit of our Ultrapremium steels. As one example, a customer that manufactures sophisticated power generation and transmission systems tested gear sets made from our Ultrapremium steel. Those tests simulated exposure to the harshest service environment conditions, running a predetermined number of hours in extreme conditions. Steel made by incumbent suppliers resulted in failures. But with Ultrapremium steel, all 10 gear sets passed with no failures, and resulted in no signs of fatigue.
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