Contact element method with two relative coordinates and its application to prediction of strip profile of a sendzimir mill

A new numerical method, Contact Element Method with Two Relative Coordinates, has been developed. The main features of this method are that element meshing depends on the contact length between rolls or between the work roll and the strip, and that each element has two relative coordinates based on two separate contact objects. With this method, a program code “Setup Models for Sendzimir Mill” (SM4SM) has been developed for prediction of the strip profile of a 20-high Sendzimir mill with double AS-U-Roll systems. The strip profiles are predicted under various rolling conditions, such as the positions of AS-U racks, the 1st intermediate roll (IMR) shift and taper slope & length, the roll J profile and the coefficient of friction, etc.