What Are The Different Types Of Silicon Steel?

What are the different types of silicon steel?

This type of steel material contains 0.5%-4.5% silicon in weight with low carbon of less than 0.08%. The addition of silicon (Si) improves the magnetic softness and increases the electrical resistivity of steel. There are two forms of silicon steel: grain-oriented (GO) and non-oriented (NGO). GO silicon steel can be further subdivided into regular grain-oriented (RGO) and high permeability grain-oriented (HGO) materials. Silicon steel is known for its high permeability and low amounts of core loss, which make it useful in the generation, distribution, and consumption of electricity, such as small to large motors, relays, solenoids, appliances’ motors, wind turbines, cores of transformers, EV, and power generator equipment, etc.

As one of the most important soft magnetic materials in use today, the number of silicon steel applications ranges from a few ounces for small relays or pulse transformers to several tons for generators, motors and transformers. The continued growth in demand for power generation requires the development of better steels to reduce the waste of energy in electrical equipment and to minimize the physical size of the increasingly powerful devices now required. The earliest soft magnetic material was iron, which contained many impurities. It was gradually discovered that silicon, a material that increased resistivity, reduced hysteresis losses, increased permeability, and virtually eliminated aging. Nowadays silicon steel is widely used in a variety of electrical and electronic applications due to its unique properties, such as silicon steel in transformers, electric motors and inductors. A large number of oriented steels were used, mainly for power and distribution transformers. However, it did not replace non-oriented silicon steel, which was widely used where low-cost, low-loss materials were needed, especially in rotating equipment.