Abstract: The effects of three common cooling rates, namely air cooling, a cooling rate of  40  ℃/s, and water cooling, on the hot-rolled plate of a grain-oriented silicon steel were studied from the differences of microstructure, texture, and precipitate phases. As the normalizing cooling rate increased, the number of grains on the normalized plate surface increased, while the grain size gradually decreased. This would promote the transformation of austenite phases in the steel into metastable phases. After normalization, there was no significant change in the texture of the hot-rolled plate; all experimental steels exhibited a strong  α fiber texture, a weak γ fiber texture, and a weak Goss texture along the plate thickness direction. In addition, the size and volume fraction of precipitate phases in the plate decreased as the cooling rate increased.

Key words: grain-oriented silicon steel, normalization, texture, precipitate phases