Effect of Material Property Changes on the Performance of Al Rolling Mills

Abstract

The industrial production of aluminium strip comprises a rather long process chain. One of the characteristics of aluminium alloys is that a number of final strip properties are influenced considerably already at very early process stages. Since it is practically impossible to run large variations of controlled process changes on an industrial mill experimentally, Through Process Modelling (TPM) has been in focus of research and has developed into a valuable tool to design process chains with a view to achieving desired properties. Metallurgical models in combination with (plasto-) mechanical/thermal models trace variables of state through the process chain down to the final operation. However, there are further important properties of the product, which may be generated as consequence of the total production history. Predominant examples are the strip profile and flatness and the product surface. These properties do not only result from the processes settings, they may also have a strong back-effect on the process performance itself. As a consequence they may also affect the metallurgical properties. This paper shows representative computations of in-dustrial aluminium rolling process steps to evaluate the interactions of different mechanisms taking place in the rolling processing chain, with a special attention to profile/flatness, surface and metal-lurgical properties.