Simulation and measurement of temperature in high speed drawing process of steel wires

Abstract

Theoretical and experimental investigations of steel wire heating up and cooling down in the high-speed drawing process have been carried out in the study. The theoretical investigation encompassed simulations of the drawing process using the Forge2011® program, in which the temperature distributions at the wire exit from the die and the temperature of wire after being wound onto the drum were determined.To verify the obtained theoretical investigation results, the experimental measurement of the temperature of wires on the drum and on the storage reel was carried out in industrial conditions.It has been demonstrated that intensive and short-duration heating of a thin, approximately 50µm-thick wire sub-surface layer up to temperatures not exceeding 1000°C occurs in the high-speed drawing process. By contrast, immediately after wire exit from the die, intensive cooling of the wire over a length of about 0.2 mm down to a temperature of below 200°C takes place.