A Comprehensive Review on Flame Scarfing of Steel Slabs: Fundamentals, Challenges, Evolution, and Future

The growing demand for high‐quality steel across industries has made improving steel slab surface quality a critical priority. Flame scarfing, a widely used method to remove surface defects, faces persistent challenges that limit its quality. This review synthesizes current research on advancing flame scarfing, highlighting key challenges, technological evolutions, and future directions. The defect removal mechanism in flame scarfing remains complex, with removed material composition not fully explored. Scarfing depth is affected by multiple factors, but insufficient knowledge of iron–oxygen reaction mechanisms and slag composition hinders accurate prediction models. Groove formation—driven by oxygen–fuel ratio and gas flow dynamics—degrades surface quality; numerical simulations show promise for suppression but need more quantitative analysis. Heat transfer impacts scarfing outcomes, yet existing heat source models lack precision. Technologically, flame scarfing has evolved through manual, mechanized, automated, and intelligent stages, with equipment refinements boosting stability and efficiency. Future research should clarify defect removal mechanisms, model iron–oxygen reactions accurately, suppress grooves, develop scarfing‐specific heat source models, and accelerate equipment intelligentization. This review offers in‐depth insights into flame scarfing, providing a theoretical basis for process optimization and guiding efforts to improve steel slab surface quality.