A simulation of roll wear in hot rolling processes

Hot rolling is an important steel production process. Rolls in a hot rolling mill cost significantly and influence quality of products. Wear is a major factor of roll fault. So, it is very important to study roll wear at high temperature, although roll wear study in a real rolling mill is very difficult, especially for a hot rolling mill. To meet the need of practical production for the rolling process, simulating investigation for high temperature rolling process is a feasible method for roll wear study. A high temperature rolling wear test rig was designed and manufactured to simulate the real hot rolling mill as closely as possible. Newly-proposed wear test geometry, roller on disk, is implemented in this test rig, and a high temperature environment for the contact zone is established as well. Wear, friction force, sliding/rolling ratio, acoustic emission and vibration are measured in the experimental system. The computerised measurement and control system guarantees that the long-term wear experiment is conducted automatically and stably. From the preliminary test for the experimental system, it was found that the system can be used to simulate roll wear in high temperature environment. This experimental system can be employed to develop and test some new roll grades or search optimum working parameters of the rolling process. It can be used to simulate both cold rolling and hot rolling processes. Versatile software in the system automate all the operation for the test rig, including hardware diagnosis, sensor and instrument calibration, pre-adjustment before experiment, and actual experiment.