A Comprehensive Model to Compute Roll Gap Profile for a Rolling Mill Including Bearing and Mill Housing Deflections

Obtaining the desired strip profile is of paramount importance in cold rolling. The final strip profile depends on several parameters of the plants including crown and taper profiles and segmented backup roll positions. This paper aims to present a newly developed combined finite element–analytical model of the rolling mill able to model not only the roll cluster but also the mill housing and backup bearings deformations. This makes the proposed model especially suitable to simulate cluster-type rolling mills. The model exploits a modified elastic foundation formulation for a precise computation of the contact forces between rolls, taking into account rolls’ crown and taper. A reduced stiffness matrix approach is implemented for accurate mill housing modeling. A full 3D finite element model of the rolling mill and experimental data are used for the validation of the presented model. By exploiting the validated model, the paper shows that the deformation of supporting bearings and mill housing plays a crucial role in the strip profile calculation and should be included in any cluster-type roll mill model.