Advanced Numerical and Physical Simulation of the Ring Rolling Process

Advanced Numerical and Physical Simulation of the Ring Rolling Process.

The ring rolling process is utilized to produce a large variety of work-pieces including ball bearing, components for automotive industry, power plants and for aerospace or aeronautics applications. For large work-pieces, the process is carried out at high temperature, the piloting scheme of the different components of the rolling mill is a major concern for the engineer (see figure 1). The final microstructure after forming is also a key issue. Therefore numerical simulation must take into account the main features of the industrial process and a realistic model of the thermal, mechanical and physical behavior of the material to be processed.

In the paper, the main ingredient of the numerical model will be briefly outlined:

-          Constitutive and friction modeling,

-          Mechanical formulation and thermal coupling,

-          Finite discretization with the ALE method, which allows us to locate the refined part of the mesh in the vicinity of the deformed zone, and save computer time,

-          Physical laws for predicting metallurgic evolutions,

-          Complex piloting of the rolling mill to reproduce the industrial process.

Several examples of practical applications, using our Forge computed code, will be presented and discussed. A special attention is devoted to the prediction of the final microstructure using a phenomenological approach and macro models as shown in Figure 2.

Microstructure can also be predicted by a finite element micro modeling using our computer code Digimicro. Examples of micro simulations will be shown.