Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Procedia Engineering 81 (2014 ) 132 136 11th International Conference on Technology of Plasticity, ICTP 2014, October 19-24, 2014, Nagoya Congress Center, Nagoya, Japan Finite element modeling of edge defect formation in plate rolling Alexander Pesin*, Denis Pustovoytov Department of Metal Forming, Nosov State Technical University, 38, Lenin prospect, Magnitogorsk, 455000, Russia Abstract There is a transition of metal from the lateral and end faces of a continuously cast slab to the broad surface of the plate during the rolling process. The process of metal transition to the wide sides of the plate is the process of defect formation, because surface cracks and defects from the side and end faces transfer to the front surfaces of the plate. When rolling is over the cracks are located on the edges of the plate while the width corresponds to the width of the transition strips. Longitudinal edge cracking during plate hot rolling can occur as a consequence the following three factors combination: 1) transition of metal from the lateral and end faces to the broad surfaces of the strip; 2) the occurrence of tensile stresses during the metal transition; 3) reduced plasticity of the slab edges due to the lower -950 C). Significant shift of cracks from the edges takes place due to the transition of metal from the lateral and end faces to the broad surfaces because of the uneven range across the thickness. There is a significant temperature gradient even at 15-20 C. 2014 2014 The The Authors. Authors. Published Published by by Elsevier Elsevier Ltd. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license Selection (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). and peer-review under responsibility of Nagoya University and Toyohashi University of Technology Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Nagoya University Keywords: Plate rolling; Edge defect forming; Finite element method; Temperature gradient 1. Introduction For hot-rolled flat products major losses of steel are due to surface defects, which are caused by the quality of an incoming continuous cast slab. Surface defects appear in continuous cast slabs due to a wide range of reasons combining and aggravating each other. Each typical surface defect of a continuous cast slab if not detected and corrected transforms into a surface defect of a rolled strip or plate which will then be rejected as an inadequate * Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-351-906-3056; fax: +7-351-923-5759. E-mail address: pesin@bk.ru 1877-7058 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Nagoya University doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.09.139
Alexander Pesin and Denis Pustovoytov / Procedia Engineering 81 ( 2014 ) 132 136 133 product. The most critical problem of hot rolled plates is connected to the propagation of longitudinal surface cracks located along the length of the rolled product at the distance of 20-60 mm from the lateral edges. The crack depth can be absolutely different, within the range from 0.1 to 2.0 mm depending on its depth at the moment of its formation. There have been carried out many researches of deformation behavior cases of edge defects by means of the finite element method (FEM). Takashi et al. (2003) presented the analysis of the character of plate surface defects deformation. In the course of modeling of the hot rolling process a V-shaped defect was analyzed. The results of the numerical simulation demonstrated that increased reduction led to the defect opening during the rolling of V-shaped defects. Gulova et al. (2008) researched the defects influence on the final quality of rolled flat products. Artificial defects of V- and U-score types were applied to the slab having different sizes, designs and locations. Formation of primary defects was observed with increasing of a relative amount of deformation by 50%, where overlaps and scratches were observed. Ervasti et al. (2000) and Yu (2010) presented the research of the transformation of slab surface cracks during hot rolling with the use of DYNA software based on FEM. The influence of three rolling modes on transverse cracks was analyzed. It was found that with the increase of deformation fractioning the angle of crack opening or their width significantly increased, the final depth of a crack thereby remained almost the same. Kainz et al. (2008) and Pesin et al. (2010) performed systematic forming simulations of the development of initial slab corner cracks during hot roughing and finishing mill passes utilizing the finite element package Deform-3D. The numerical results described the morphological changes of such already existing corner cracks. Chun and Park (2007) observed an effective method to decrease edge defect of stainless steel in hot strip mill. Deformation behaviors of the slab edge in the roughing rolling process were analyzed by the rigid-plastic finite element method. They guessed that the edge defects depended mostly on the edge bulging generated by the difference of metal flow between contact area and noncontact area during rolling. 2. Finite element simulation of edge defect formation by means of DEFORM package To simulate the edge defect formation during the hot plate rolling, the commercial finite element package Deform 2D (SFTC, USA) is utilized. The conditions for the modeling of hot rolling of slabs with surface cracks are the following: the evolution of microstructure in steel is not considered; the rolls are incompressible (absolutely rigid); initial dimensions of cracks are known in advance; there are no micropores in tips of cracks. As a rule, during numerical modeling a real crack is replaced by a mathematical cut. The crack has a V-shaped cut form. The slab is rolled in five passes (Table 1) during the broad-sizing (Fig. 1) which are in agreement with practical ones used. The slab thickness is 260 mm, the work roll diameter is 1200 mm. Material under rolling is microalloyed steel (0.07C-1.6Mn-0.4Si-0.08V-0.05Nb-0.2Ni, %). Therefore the results presented in this study are applicable to a broad range of steel grades. As for the tribology between the slab and the work-roll, a shear friction law with a friction parameter m = 0.9 (Kobayashi, 1989) is applied. During simulation of the process the thermal exchange of the slab with the ambient environment, work rolls and table rolls is considered. Table 1. Pass schedule during broadening. Pass No. 0 1 2 3 4 5 Thickness during broad-sizing, mm 260.0 228.8 201.3 171,1 142.0 127.8 Relative reduction, % 0 12 12 15 17 10 Fig.1. Scheme of hot plate rolling with broad-sizing (top view).
134 Alexander Pesin and Denis Pustovoytov / Procedia Engineering 81 ( 2014 ) 132 136 Fig. 2 shows the temperature field of the slab prior to the rolling. The initial temperature gradient of the slab is 20 between the bottom and the top surfaces formed during transportation of the slab from the furnace to the operating stand. Fig.3 shows the shape and the initial location of the cracks on the end face of the slab. Adaptive meshing was used. Fig. 2. Temperature field of the slab prior to rolling. Fig. 3. Initial location of the cracks on the end face of slab. The analysis of stress-strain state revealed that filling of the deformation zone on the front end face of the slab resulted in a high tensile stress (Fig. 4), which could cause formation of the surface cracks in this zone. Fig. 4. Tensile stress on the front end face of slab during rolling.
Alexander Pesin and Denis Pustovoytov / Procedia Engineering 81 ( 2014 ) 132 136 135 On the basis of the numerical simulation it was found that during the rolling process at the width breaking-down stage the crack moved from the end face of the slab to the bottom surface of the plate (Fig. 5). After turning around 90 the end faces of the slab would be the lateral sides and the defect would be located by the edge of the plate; during the next passes the defect would be elongated in longitudinal direction. The analysis of the results shows that the temperature gradient between the top and the bottom surfaces of the slab influences significantly the movement of the cracks. Since the bottom surface of the slab is colder than the top one, the end faces of the slab decline or tilt to the bottom surface. As a result the amount of the metal moving to the bottom surface increases while the amount of the metal moving to the top surface decreases. It is the reason of more frequent appearance of the cracks on the bottom surface of the plate. Fig. 5. Movement of the cracks from end face of the slab to bottom surface of plate: (a) initial dimensions of the crack; (b), (c), (d), (e), (f) shape of the defect after the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th passes respectively. The findings of the simulation are well correlated with the shape and location of the defects on the surface of the plates rolled under actual industrial conditions (Fig. 6). Fig. 6. Cross section view of crack (a) and bottom view of crack (b). Thus the movement of the cracks is conditioned by shifting of metal from the end faces of the slab to the bottom surface of the plate due to the gradient across the slab thickness when the bottom surface of the slab is colder than the top one. The cause of the edge cracks formation is a high tensile stress generated during rolling of the front end in the slab corner area, results in defects. To reduce the possibility of corner crack formation it is necessary to increase the temperature of the corner area of
136 Alexander Pesin and Denis Pustovoytov / Procedia Engineering 81 ( 2014 ) 132 136 the slab. This can be achieved by casting not a rectangular cross-section slab (Fig. 7a), but rounded edge slab (Fig. 7b), which enables increasing the temperature in the corner area by 70-100. 3. Conclusions Fig. 7. Temperature field of the corner area of slab: (a) rectangular cross section slab; (b) slab with rounded edges. The temperature gradient between the top and the bottom surfaces of the slab plays a significant role in the movement of the cracks from the plate edges. Since the bottom surface of the slab is colder than the top one the end faces of the slab decline or tilt towards the bottom surface during the rolling process. As a result the amount of metal moving to the bottom surface increases while the amount of metal moving to the top surface decreases. It is the reason of more frequent appearance of the cracks on the bottom surface of the plate. The main reason of longitudinal edge cracks appearance is high tensile stress generated at the front end of the slab during the rolling process when the metal moves from the end face to the bottom surface of the plate. Since in the corner area with reduce the probability of the edge cracks appearance it is necessary to increase the temperature of the corner area of the slab. For that purpose it is proposed to cast not a rectangular cross section slab but a rounded edge slab which allows increasing the temperature in the corner area. References Takashi I., Nobuki Y., Yoshinori Y., 2003. Deformation analysis of surface defect on plate rolling. Tetsu to Hagane 89, 1142-1149. Gulova L., Zemko M., Vlado M., Lászlo T., 2008. Simulation of production of selection defects in the rolling process. Acta Metallurgica Slovaca 14,233-239. Ervasti E., Ståhlberg U., 2000. Transversal cracks and their behavior in the hot rolling of steel slabs. Journal of Materials Processing Technology 101, 312-321. Kainz A., Parteder E., Zeman K., 2008. From slab corner cracks to edge-defects in hot rolled strip experimental and numerical investigations. Steel Research International 79, 861-867. Pesin A., Salganik V., Pustovoitov D., 2010. Modeling of surface crack form change of continuously cast slabs in roughing rolling at wide strip mill 2000. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference METAL FORMING 2010, Toyohashi, Japan, 82-86. Pesin A., Salganik V., Pustovoitov D., 2010. Transverse crack modeling of continuously casted slabs through finite element method in roughing rolling at wide strip mill. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Numerical Methods in Industrial Forming Processes NUMIFORM 2010, Pohang, Republic of Korea, 1309-1315. Chun M.S., Park H.D., 2007. Improvement of edge seam by using shape roll in hot strip mill. Posco technical report 10, 56-63. Hailiang YU, 2010. FE Analysis of Evolution of Defects during Rolling, Finite Element Analysis, David Moratal (Ed.), InTech Kobayashi S., Oh S. I., Altan T. Metalforming and the Finite-Element Method. Oxford University Press. 1989. 378.