3D FEM Simulation of Rolling Load Working on Piercer Plug in Mannesmann Piercing Process

Abstract

This paper presents 3D FEM simulation of piercer plug in Mannesmann piercing process. Target is establishment of a virtual piercing experiment tool to assistant piercer plug development. FEM simulation analysis has been applied to Mannesmann piercing process previously. Aspect of those studies is how to simulate material flow in piercing process, especially focused on how to describe ductile fracture which is known as Mannesmann effect. Thus far, simulation of rolling tools has not been focused. Present piercer plugs, made of special alloys, are damaged severely and quickly in case of piercing higher Cr contented alloys in seamless steel tube production process. Therefore, development of FEM simulation on rolling tools has been demanded in production side. 3D FEM analysis of piercer plug is performed with ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian—Eulerian) method by using ABAQUS/Explicit 6.9. Simulations are thermo‐mechanical, elasto‐plastic coupled, and dynamic calculation. Piercer plug and the billet are modeled by solid elements to analyze various factors on stress, strain and temperature. Ductile fracture is not considered in the simulations. Simulation results are correlated sufficiently to experimental results on damage of piercer plugs. Verifying absolute value of simulated factors is hard since there are few empirical methods to measure them. As a conclusion, studied simulations are sufficient as a virtual piercing experiment tool to develop higher performance piercer plugs.