Idle and axial roll speed law trend effect in an industrial ring rolling process

In Ring Rolling process, to generate a seamless and axis symmetrical ring, two independent deformation processes simultaneously occur to reduce the starting ring cross section shape (width and height) in order to increase the diameter. How this shape changes during the whole deformation process greatly affects the produced ring quality and the loads and energy needed. The main problem is that the shape change is due to two deformation processes that occur in two different ring sections. The ring width reduction is realized in the cross section between the Idle and the Driver roll while the cross section deformed by the Axial rolls movement regulates the ring height. The main problem is that each roll speed law could be set independently from the others. In the industrial environment, a milling curve is introduced to correlate them to the ring section shape. In order to enhance the knowledge on how the Idle and Axial roll speed laws affect the Ring Rolling process, in this work an industrial case study was modeled by a numerical approach. Different Idle and Axial roll speed laws (linearly decreasing, constant, linearly increasing), were designed and simulated. The results were analyzed in order to understand how each speed law trend affects the produced ring quality (higher diameter, lower fishtail) and the process performance (lower loads and energy required for manufacturing).