Research on surface topography wear of textured work roll in cold rolling

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to build a transient wear prediction model of surface topography of textured work roll, and then to investigate the wear performance of different original textured surfaces. The surface topography of steel sheets is one of the most important surface quality indexes, which is inherited from the textured work rolls in cold rolling. Surface topography of work roll is obviously changing in the cold rolling process. However, surface topography is difficult to measure in the industry production process.Design/methodology/approach– This paper presents a numerical approach to simulate the wear process based on the mixed lubrication model of cold rolling interface developed by Wilson and Sheu (Sheu and Wilson, 1994). It is assumed that wear takes place at locations where the surfaces are in direct contact, and the volume is removed by an abrasive particle which is an abstract concept based on the wear phenomenon of textured work roll. At each simulation cycle, the distribution of the contact pressure is calculated by the lubrication model. The material is removed by an abstract abrasive particle and the surface topography is modified correspondingly. The renewed surface topography is then used for the next cycle.Findings– Through comparative analysis, it can be found that the simulation results possess similar statistical characteristic with the measured data. A set of roughness parameters such as the amplitude, spacing and frequency-domain characteristics are introduced to analyze the wear performance of different textured surfaces. Numerical examples show that the surface topography has a significant effect on the wear performance of work roll in cold rolling.Originality/value– The proposed model can accurately predict the wear process of the surface topography in the cold rolling process, which provides the foundation for optimization of original surface topography of textured work roll. The model can also be considered as a tool applicable for research on control of the surface topography of steel strip in the cold rolling process.