A New Procedure for the Determination of the Main Technology Parameters of Rolling Mills

Abstract

Nowadays, approximately 90–95 % of metals are processed by cold rolling. There has been a substantial increase in demand for utility properties as well as for reducing production costs. These objectives cannot be achieved without a high degree of automation, control and monitoring throughout the manufacturing process. These qualitative changes require rather deep and comprehensive theoretical and metallurgical–technological knowledge of operators in the field of design, research and production of rolled steel sheets, which is needed for further development in rolling steel. A continuous quality control of material and surface during the rolling process is a part of these tasks and is associated with providing the full automation of rolling mills. Starting from theoretical foundations, we have developed a new procedure for the determination of main technology parameters of a rolling mill. The main difference between our proposal and current methods of calculation is as follows. Our proposal is based on the knowledge of deformation properties of materials and continuous processes of stress-deformation state and on the knowledge of reductions in different stages of rolling. Current procedures are on the contrary based on static calculations using the geometry of the system—working roll and instantaneous sheet metal thickness in a gap between the rollers. In doing so, the calculations almost ignore the real stress—deformation properties of rolled metal sheets, optimal transmission rate of deformation in the material at the given speeds of rollers and the given main rolling force. We are concerned with the optimum balanced system: main rolling force—rolling speeds, or transmission rate of deformation in the material. This procedure allows us to achieve a significant increase in operational performance as well as in rolling process quality.