The first blast furnace at Monlevade Works, based on charcoal, started up in 1937. Since then the route blast furnace-oxygen steelmaking has been used. In the course of the time, Monlevade Works ironmaking area went past some changes until reaching the present situation: one sinter plant and one blast furnace based on coke. This blast furnace started up in December 1999 and its nominal capacity is 1,040,000 thm/ year. This paper aims at showing the evolution of blast furnace operational performance, within a seven year operation which allowed a production of 1,103,935 thm in 2006.

Transient ladle reactions in IF steel melts are simulated experimentally. It is found that when Al2O3 is thermodynamically stable, Ti has the effect of modifying the inclusions as a result of local super-saturation. When Al2TiO5 is stable, the inclusion morphology appeared to change into smooth, non-facetted shapes. When Ti oxide is stable, the possibility of generating secondary inclusions during solidification was investigated.

A finite volume computer model of the continuous casting process for steel flat products has been developed. In this first stage, the model concentrates on the hydrodynamic aspects of the process and in particular the dynamic behavior of the metal/slag interface. The model was validated against experimental measurements obtained in a water model apparatus.

CVC plus® is a worldwide established and well proven technology package to control profile and flatness in hot strip mills and plate mills. Latest developments of this technology are the application of CVC plus® grindings on work and backup rolls, CVC plus® grindings of higher order and intelligent shifting strategies. The capability of the developments is demonstrated with recent operational results.

The crash performance improvements achieved by using Press Hardened Steel (PHS) based laser welded blanks are reported. The interest of using a dedicated welding process to avoid excessive AlSi coating dilution is discussed. In-use properties analysis demonstrates the interest of this concept. Case studies are performed on door-ring and rear rails to demonstrate the strong potential in terms of weight saving and crash performance.