Numerical and Experimental Approach to Investigate Plane-view Shape and Crop Loss in Multistage Plate Rolling

A finite element based approach that can be used to investigate the plane-view shape and crop loss of a material during plate rolling is presented. We employed a three-dimensional finite element model to continuously simulate the shape change of the head and tail of a plate as the number of rolling passes increases. The main feature of the proposed model lies in the fact that the multistage rolling can be simulated without a break because the rolling direction of the material is reversibly controlled as the roll gap sequentially decreases. The material constants required in the finite element analysis were experimentally obtained by hot tensile tests. We also performed a pilot hot plate rolling test to verify the usefulness of the proposed finite element model. Results reveal that the computed plane-view shapes as well as crop losses by the proposed finite element model were in good agreement with the measured ones. The crop losses predicted by the proposed model were within 5% of those measured from the pilot hot plate rolling test