Quantitative Design Methodology for Flat Ring Rolling Process

Abstract

For a specific ring rolling, the quantitative design of the rolling billet and feeding strategy is the most important factor to obtain the ideal process. This research focuses on developing the quantitative design methodology for the flat ring rolling in a systematic way. The paper is organized in two parts: billet constraint and feeding interval in the flat ring rolling. In the first part, the constraint conditions for both the piercing process and ring rolling are taken into consideration, deducing the limiting wall thickness and the limiting height of the billet for a specific ring rolling. And for the second part, the expansion of ring outer diameter, the rolling force and rolling temperature, the form error occurrence together with the gripping and penetration condition are included to generate the feeding interval. In the feeding interval created, the response of ring material to the processing parameters must also be considered. So for a specific ring rolling, we established the processing map of the material used. Based on that, a desirable feeding strategy that could obtain a higher efficiency of power dissipation was determined by means of the subroutine VUAMP in ABAQUS. Practical ring rolling experiment was carried out and the microstructure of the finished ring was also observed. The experiment shows that the deformed ring was rolled to the final dimension in a stable manner without macroscopic or microscopic defects, which indicated that the quantitative design of the flat ring rolling process is reasonable.