Brief history of controlling cooling rate in cast steel

Steel history and its chronological progress have been reviewed from different aspects on many published papers, and books and it can be found on many websites. However, one historical aspect of this topic, which has received limited attention, is the gradual progress in knowledge of controlling cooling rate to get the desirable thermal and mechanical properties for the steel products. This paper presents some evidence of understanding the effect of cooling rate on the material properties from Iron Age era. It also discusses briefly the importance of determining optimimum cooling rate in enhancing the production rate.