Numerical simulation of shape rolling

Abstract: In the first part of this thesis, the FE program MSC.Marc is applied for coupled thermomechanical simulations of wire-rod rolling. In order to predict material behaviour of an AISI 302 stainless steel at high strain rates generated during wire-rod rolling, a material model based on dislocation density is applied. Then, the evolution of temperature, strain rate and flow stress is predicted in the first four rolling passes of a wire block. In the second part of the thesis, an alternative approach to simulation of shape rolling is evaluated. The approach is applied in order to save the computational time in cases where many shape-rolling passes are to be simulated. The approach is a combination of the slab method and a 2D FEM with a generalized plane-strain formulation. A number of various isothermal shape-rolling passes are simulated applying the simplified approach. The simulations are carried out using an in-house 2D FE code implemented in Matlab. The results are compared to fully 3D FE analyses. The comparison shows that the simplified approach can predict roll forces and roll torques with a fair accuracy, but the predicted area reductions are a bit underestimated. The reasons for the deviations between the simplified approach and the 3D FEM are discussed.