Effect of Silicon Content on Iron Loss and Magnetic Domain Structure of Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel Sheet

Increasing the silicon content in non-grain-oriented (NO) electrical steel sheets is known to decrease iron loss by changing electrical resistivity and magnetostriction behavior. However, few studies on the effect of high silicon contents in grain-oriented (GO) electrical steel have been reported. One of the major differences in the iron loss of GO and NO is that excess eddy current loss, which has a strong relationship with the magnetic domain structure, is more dominant in total iron loss in GO. In this paper, high silicon GO was prepared by the CVD siliconizing method, which has the advantage that the silicon content can be changed without changing the crystal grain size and crystallographic texture of the specimen. It was found that iron loss was reduced as the silicon content was increased, and 6.5 mass% silicon steel showed about half the hysteresis loss of conventional 3 mass% silicon steel, but the eddy current loss in 6.5 mass% silicon steel was equivalent to or slightly larger than that in 3 mass% silicon steel. Magnetic domain observation and calculations suggested that this difference was a result of coarsening of the magnetic domains in the high silicon steel.