3D Modelling of Hot Strip Rolling with ABAQUS

E. Parteder1, A. Kainz2, G. Hein3, K. Zeman2

1
voestalpine Grobblech GmbH, 4020 Linz, Austria, Research and Development
2
Institute of Computer Aided Methods in Mechanical Engineering,
Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Altenbergerstraße 69, 4040 Linz
3
voestalpine Stahl GmbH, 4020 Linz, Austria, Research and Development,
Business Area Steel Plant – Hot Strip Production

ABSTRACT: The hot rolling process can be considered as a key step within the production
chain of high quality steel strip and sheet material. To attain a better insight into the
phenomena during the rolling process, the application of customized on- and off-line
modelling tools is of utmost importance.
In this paper different approaches to 3D off-line modelling of the hot strip rolling process will
be presented.
For the prediction of 3D-effects during the roughing process of thick slabs, such as the
lateral material flow and the influence of an edger, adequate 3D models are essential. Such
models also enable the systematic study of, e.g., asymmetric temperature distributions,
camber, wedge and friction inhomogeneities between work roll and strip surface in lateral
direction and their influence on the strip geometry. The presented model for the roughing
process is set up by utilizing ABAQUS/Explicit, simulating the material flow behavior and
ABAQUS/Standard for the response of the elastic roll stack in a decoupled manner.
For the prediction of the material flow behavior in the finishing mill, the (iterative) coupling of
the deformation of the strip with the elastic response of the roll-stack is essential. Therefore,
a customized FEM-code for the effective simulation of the elasto-viscoplastic material flow
inside the roll gap is under development. The verification of this customized self-developed
program has to be performed by a comparison of significant results, in particular the
pressure distribution inside the roll-gap and the residual stress distribution after rolling, with
those obtained by the commercial FEM-packages ABAQUS/Standard as well as Deform-3D.

1. INTRODUCTION
Numerical modelling of hot strip rolling is widely used to gain enhanced insight into
critical process details, for optimization of process and product quality, as well as for on-line
control. One critical aspect is the prediction of the microstructural evolution of the rolled
material throughout the whole process chain from the reheating furnace downstream to the
downcoiler. Describing microstructural phenomena is the basis to predict the mechanical
properties of the product including recrystallisation, precipitation and phase transformation
phenomena [1]. Due to the fact that these models are developed for on-line prediction, the
roll gap is modelled in 2D, thus, lateral effects are neglected.
Another crucial topic of flat hot rolling simulations is the accurate and reliable
prediction of the hot strip’s geometry during and after hot rolling. Of particular interest within
this research area are phenomena like the formation of camber during roughing passes as
well as finishing train passes, further interaction phenomena between profile and camber as
well as strip flatness and buckle formation especially at the last stands of the finishing mill
[2]. Moreover, special emphasis has to be put on the residual stress state after the finishing
passes and their further evolution during cooling. To treat all these topics in a thorough way,
lateral effects have to be taken into account. For these purposes commercial finite element
packages, such as ABAQUS/Standard and Explicit [3] or Deform-3D [4] are well suited.
However, the requirements concerning storage capacities and calculation time are often
extremely high. Especially for the finishing mill passes, where the aspect ratio thickness to
width decreases more and more, the computation time for solving such problems with
commercial FEM packages becomes extremely high. In this paper two approaches will be
presented, taking these critical details into account.
2. 3D MODEL FOR ROUGHING PASSES
To cover inhomogeneous effects across the strip-width and their influence on the
macroscopic strip geometry like camber as well as their interaction with the strip profile
(particularly the formation of strip-wedge), the main effects like elastic deformation of the mill
housing as well as the elastic deformation of the roll stack (i.e. work rolls and back up rolls)
have to be taken into account [5], whereas the stiffness of the bearings can be neglected in
this consideration. Incorporating both elastic effects within one model, may not be effectively
solved by utilizing a commercial FEM package. As will be shown in this paper, it is possible
and extremely beneficial to split the calculation into two steps:
1. Material flow model (ABAQUS/Explicit): It takes into account the elastic effects of
the mill housing, combined with the elasto-plastic deformation calculation of the
strip, thereby neglecting the elastic deformations of the roll stack.
2. Elastic roll stack model (ABAQUS/Standard): The pressure distribution obtained
from the first model is used as a boundary condition for the second one, which
enables the calculation of the exact profile of the strip.
Such a splitting of the calculation is possible for roughing passes (thickness 210 mm
down to 35 mm), where the coupling of effects concerning the strip profile and the pressure
distribution between work roll and strip is only weak. On the one hand, the transversal flow
of the material exhibits low resistance (see Fig.°1) [6]. Therefore, almost all relative strip
crown changes are feasible without buckling, and the strip profile after each pass coincides
almost perfectly with the profile of the roll gap [7]. On the other hand, asymmetric effects due
to inhomogeneous rolling conditions (like temperature distributions over the width,
inhomogeneous friction conditions) have a low impact on the roll-gap geometry and
therefore on the strip profile (particularly on the wedge). However, the influence of such
phenomena can be taken into account by directly superposing their effects with the results of
the undisturbed material flow model.
Crown transmission coefficient

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Strip exit thickness over width

Fig. 1: Schematic representation of material flow for

hot strip rolling: Transversal flow is restricted with Fig. 2: Typical dependence of the crown transmission
decreasing thickness of the strip. Vanishing coefficient as a function of the ratio of strip exit
longitudinal flow means the state of free spreading thickness to width (cf. [7]).
where the longitudinal flow is homogeneous [6].

This behavior will be characterized by the crown transmission coefficient which

describes the influence of the initial relative strip crown on the final relative strip crown. For
thin wide strips the transverse material flow is largely inhibited, leading to a totally
unchanged relative strip crown, for which the crown transmission is normalized to unity,
whereas for thick and narrow strips almost any change of the strip profile should be feasible,
even without buckling. A value of zero for the crown transmission coefficient therefore
indicates that the initial crown does not have any impact on the exit relative strip crown. To
understand the dependencies between profile changes (i.e. crown changes) and waviness
(i.e. flatness defects) in full detail, the underlying material flow inside the roll-gap has to be
analyzed.
2.1 Modelling Details
Material flow model: Utilizing ABAQUS/Explicit, the behavior of the housing of the roll-
stand is modelled by linear connector elements CONN3D2 (AXIAL) and by the application
of a certain level of material damping to avoid vibrations after the first contact of work roll
and slab. The connector elements are pinned to the nodes DS-T and OS-T (drive side top
and operating side top, cf. Figure 3) as well as DS-B and OS-B. (drive side bottom and
operating side bottom). The torque is transmitted to the rigid work rolls by the nodes n-T and
n-B via connector elements CONN3D2 (ROTATION). All these connector elements are
linked to the reference points of the rigid work roll via additional connector elements
CONN3D2 (WELD) (see Fig. 3). The horizontal work rolls are modelled as rigid bodies and
are subdivided into 5 segments in lateral direction, enabling the definition of inhomogeneous
friction conditions over the width of the rolls. Swivelling of the horizontal rolls can be easily
taken into account by re-positioning the connector nodes and by defining a rotation angle of
the rolls with respect to the longitudinal direction. The edger rolls are modelled as rigid
surfaces and are not movable. The yield strength behaviour of the elasto-viscoplastic strip
material is described within the frame of Hensel-Spittel approximations and is applied to a
conventional structural steel with pronounced temperature dependence and negligible strain
rate dependence. Due to the fact that the forces of inertia can almost be neglected in such
rolling simulations, mass scaling can be used as effective method to decrease CPU time. In
this case mass scaling with a target time increment of 1e-5 sec turned out to yield
satisfactory results. Hereby, the increase of mass did not exceed 250%. The slab was
meshed with 252672 continuum elements of type C3D8. The computation time for one
simulation-run was of the order of about 2 days on an Intel Xeon 5160 (woodcrest) computer
with 4 CPU’s.

Fig. 3: Material flow model for the roughing passes including the rigid rolls, the guiding system
and the slab. The roller tables are modelled as rigid surfaces (not shown).

Elastic roll stack model: The second model used for the calculation of the strip profile
is a linear elastic model of the rolls applying 2D contact between the work roll and the back
up roll solved by utilizing ABAQUS/Standard (cf. Fig. 4). The bearings of the back up roll are
modelled as elastic bodies surrounded by rigid rings. The boundary condition of these rigid
rings can be easily defined by their reference points. The geometry of the work roll is
simplified: The roll neck is not modelled at all, because there is only a tiny feedback on the
strip profile. The pressure distribution from the material flow model is taken as an external
load for the elastic roll stack model, approximating the load-distribution by using a
polynomial fit over 12 segments in circumferential direction for each of the work roll’s cross
sections used for discretization. The contribution of the frictional stresses to the radial
displacements can fully be neglected. The stress distribution S11 for an inhomogeneous
temperature distribution is represented exemplarily in Fig. 4.
 Fig. 4: Elastic roll stack model showing the stress distribution S11 in MPa for
inhomogeneous temperature distribution within the slab (first pass).

2.2 Results
The simulation results presented here are based on the following model parameter
values: Thickness of the first pass of roughing mill: 210 mm to 176 mm thickness, edging:
20 mm, Coulomb friction: µ = 0.2. Both speeds of edger rolls and horizontal rolls are
balanced such that neither tension nor compression stresses occur between the rolls. The
slab (12000 mm length, 1400 mm width and 210 mm thickness) is meshed with 252672
linear brick elements.
Inhomogeneous temperature distribution: Constant gradient in lateral direction;
Applied temperature difference of 40°C; strip temperature on drive side is
1100°C and decreases to operating side.
Inhomogeneous friction: the outer two segments on operating side (top and
bottom roll) take an increased Coulomb friction value of µ = 0.25, compared to
the basic friction value of µ = 0.2.

Fig. 5: Edge contour (OS) after the first pass for an Fig. 6: Edge contour (OS) after the first pass for an
inhomogeneous temperature distribution (lower inhomogeneous friction behavior (higher friction
temperature on operating side). coefficient on operating side).
 The results of the material flow model for the inhomogeneous temperature distribution
as well as for the inhomogeneous friction condition are represented in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6,
respectively. The slight curve represents the contour (top edge) of the strip on operating
side, where the vertical straight lines denote the camber free reference state at lateral
coordinate 700 mm. Length direction “0” indicates the roll gap. The crop head is located
approximately at the length position -12500 mm. Fig. 5 and 6 refer to a status, where the
strip is immediately before completely leaving the roll-gap. Note that the undeformed free tail
of the strip (length direction 0 mm to approx. +1500 mm) is indicated by an elongated
straight line. This elongated bold line gives an estimation of the twisted position of the slab
within the roll-gap. The center position as well as the edge contour at the drive side are not
shown in this diagram. Using the elastic roll stack model with the pressure distributions from
the material flow models, one obtains the results as given in Fig. 7. The fully drawn line
exhibits the symmetric profile with respect to homogeneous rolling conditions. The dotted
lines represent the strip profiles due to inhomogeneous friction and temperature distributions
in lateral direction.

The results of these calculations can be summarized as follows:

The strip-camber deflects in the direction of decreasing temperature values
and decreasing friction coefficients. Note that the nominal exit thickness takes
approximately the same value for all calculations considered. The difference
between the deflection of the mill-housing on operating-side and drive-side is
very small. Therefore, the results from the material flow model show almost no
wedge formation for these parameters. These results point out that it is not
possible to derive a simple geometric relation between camber and wedge
during hot rolling. This situation can be explained by taking into account that
shearing components occur within the roll gap in lateral direction obviously
inducing a camber formation with almost no detectable wedge formation on
the strip.
The influence of the elastic effects of the roll stack increases the strip-camber
compared to a rigid work roll. Due to this profile change the prevailing camber
is amplified only by about 10% (see also [8]).

0.150
DS OS
0.125 inhomogeneous temperature

0.100
profile (mm)

0.075

0.050

0.025 inhomogeneous friction

0.000

-600 -400 -200 0 200 400 600

lateral direction (mm)

Fig. 7: Strip profiles (offset omitted) calculated with the elastic roll stack model
for homogeneous conditions (drawn through) and the boundary conditions as
described above.
3. 3D MODEL FOR THE FINISHING MILL
Calculating the material flow for the finishing mill (35 mm down to 1.5 mm): On the one
hand the material flow is strongly coupled with the elastic response of the work and back up
rolls due to the fact that the deformation of the roll set can no more be neglected in
comparison with the decreasing strip thickness and its in parallel decreasing (absolute)
thickness reduction. On the other hand the ratio thickness of the strip to width of the strip
becomes very small, hence, the transversal material flow is increasingly inhibited.
Furthermore, the number of elements preserving a suitable aspect ratio of the finite elements
increases dramatically. For this purpose a tailor made program has been developed, which
will be able to couple the material flow with the elastic behaviour of the roll stack. As for the
numerical simulation of steady-state elasto-viscoplastic rolling processes, especially for thin
wide strips, standard incremental approaches based on updated Lagrangian concepts are
not very efficient and lead to very high calculation times, we decided to implement an
effective customized pseudo-steady-state algorithm [9], some basic ideas of which were
proposed some years ago by Hacquin et al [10]. The global algorithm is based on an
iterative calculation of the stress and velocity fields inside the strip. The strip model is
coupled with a consistent determination of the flow channel geometry (i.e. work roll surface)
resulting from the deformation of the work roll surface loaded by the 2D-contact stress
distribution obtained from the preceding strip calculation.
To obtain reliable and accurate predictions concerning residual longitudinal stresses,
which are essential for the analysis of flatness-defects caused by compressive stresses in
rolling direction, the simulation regime has to be extended far enough outside the roll bite.
This critical distance, measured in units of the projected roll-gap length, can be reduced
significantly by imposing the homogeneity of the strip velocity in rolling direction as a
kinematic constraint across the strip inlet and outlet cross sections. This additional constraint
(beside the imposition of the total back and front tensile forces applied to the strip) allows the
determination of the correct stress distributions with significantly reduced meshed regions,
leading to shorter computation times and enhanced convergence properties. Systematic
studies of the non-uniform longitudinal residual stress distributions of the strip as well as the
corresponding specific rolling forces across the strip width and the dependence on the
underlying constitutive elasto-viscoplastic laws (including rate-dependence, work hardening
and also softening and creep effects) are of particular interest and currently under
realization.
It is essential to assess the numerical results not only by comparison with measured data,
simplified models and commercial FEM-packages (cf. Fig. 8-13), but also by utilizing the
global balance equations of mass, momentum and energy. The latter condition enables a
very significant error bound, namely the deviation of the torque, as estimated by using the
energy balance equation, from the value attainable by direct integration of stresses along the
contact surface. The torque-error bound decreases significantly with the overall number of
degrees of freedom in the strip model and falls below 1 % relative deviation for more than
20000 degrees of freedom. To evaluate the validity and accuracy of the 3D-results for thin
wide strips, which we obtained by utilizing our self-developed and customized material flow
simulation tool based on the concepts as outlined above, several test cases were simulated
also by utilizing the commercial FEM packages ABAQUS/Standard, Explicit [3] and for
comparison also Deform-3D [4].
Special emphasis was put on the strip crown change during rolling, the specific roll-
separating force, the contact pressure and shear stress distributions inside the roll gap (cf.
ABAQUS results represented in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 and an exemplary Deform-result depicted
in Fig. 11), and the residual stress distribution downstream the roll-gap. For the test cases
analyzed so far, the comparison of the results obtained from the self-developed model [9]
with those from the commercial FEM-packages [3, 4] shows satisfactory agreement in some
aspects. A comparison of mean (i.e. averaged in lateral direction) specific rolling force and
specific rolling torque values for selected hot finishing mill passes (denoted by FM0 – FM6,
the mean temperature values in °C are also denoted) is summarized in Table 1 and Table 2,
respectively. These results, as determined by Abaqus and by our self-developed tailor-made
pseudo-steady-state Quasi-3D-model “Q3D” [9], coincide quite well for some cases,
however, there is still significant potential for model-improvement and model-refinement.
 This is particularly true for the specific rolling force distribution (i.e. contact stress inside the
roll-gap integrated in azimuthal direction) in lateral direction, as represented in Fig. 12. All
three distributions, which were obtained by utilizing Abaqus [3], Deform [4] and “Q3D” [9],
are quite questionable and do not match our expectations (rigid work roll with zero crown,
therefore, only edge-drop effects near the strip edge should be observed). For all models
involved, about 100-200 elements in lateral direction turned out to be necessary to analyze
lateral flow, strip-spread and the specific rolling force behaviour in width direction to some
extent (refinement of discretization length near the strip edge). Concerning calculation time,
our “Q3D” model (only one finite element in half thickness direction, moreover, additional
velocity constraints are applied to ensure homogeneous deformation) takes about 2 to 10
minutes, until convergence is attained, whereas the ABAQUS calculation-time is of the order
of about 4 to 7 days on an Altix 4700 supercomputer with 8-10 CPUs involved (out of 256),
and the corresponding Deform-3D calculation took about 2 weeks on a Dual-core PC (i.e. 2
CPUs).
It can be seen from the flatness analysis results in Fig. 13 that the longitudinal stress
distribution in lateral direction exhibits a significant pressure inhomogeneity near the free
edge, which is due to lateral spread and occurs even for zero strip- and roll-crown. This
leads to a non-uniform specific lateral force distribution and therefore to a significant
feedback on the elastic roll-stack deflection, which cannot be neglected. To obtain reliable
residual stress distributions, the longitudinal Cauchy-stress values S11 (averaged in
thickness direction) have to be evaluated at suitably chosen strip outlet cross-sections, i.e.
far enough outside the roll-gap downstream, and of course also far away from the strip crop
end due to adulterant feedback effects. Special emphasis was put on the detection of well
defined steady-state conditions, which is somewhat problematic for ABAQUS/Explicit due to
quite noisy results, but this problem also occurs for implicit (both ABAQUS/Standard and
Deform-3D) calculations. Therefore, smoothing of results by suitable time averaging
concepts to avoid disturbing and adulterant beat-frequency effects turned out to be
beneficial.

Fig. 8: Typical steady-state contact pressure

Fig. 9: The corresponding contact shear distribution
distribution inside the roll gap (upper work roll is
(CSHEAR1 in rolling direction), as obtained by
omitted in the representation) for flat hot finishing mill
ABAQUS/Standard [3].
passes, as determined by ABAQUS/Standard [3].

ABAQUS Q3D ABAQUS Q3D

Pass Spec_Force [kN / mm] Spec_Force [kN / mm] Rel_deviation [%] Pass Spec_Torque [MN mm /mm] Spec_Torque [MN mm /mm] Rel_deviation [%]
PP_FM0_1060 12.459 12.758 2.34 PP_FM0_1060 0.443 0.500 12.90
PP_FM1_1015 0.302 0.334 10.71
PP_FM1_1015 12.465 12.697 1.83
PP_FM2_990 0.152 0.157 3.16
PP_FM2_990 10.523 10.866 3.15
PP_FM3_970 0.105 0.106 1.27
PP_FM3_970 8.317 8.126 -2.36 PP_FM4_950 0.051 0.050 -3.32
PP_FM4_950 5.961 5.789 -2.96 PP_FM5_930 0.040 0.036 -10.04
PP_FM5_930 6.229 6.122 -1.75 PP_FM6_915 0.019 0.016 -14.59
PP_FM6_915 3.740 3.585 -4.31 (per work roll) (per work roll)

Table 1: Comparison of (mean) specific rolling force values for Table 2: The corresponding (mean) specific rolling torque
selected finishing mill passes FM0 – FM6 (at mean temperature values (with respect to one work roll), again for the steady-
values 1060°C – 915°C), as determined by ABAQUS [3] and by state rolling case, as determined by ABAQUS [3] and by
our self-developed Pseudo-steady-state Quasi-3D-model [9]. our self-developed Pseudo-steady-state ”Q3D”-model [9].
Fig. 10: For comparison, Deform-3D [4] flat hot Fig. 11: The contact normal pressure distribution for
rolling simulations were performed, here, the first the first finishing mill pass FM0 is depicted (steady-
finishing mill pass FM0 is considered. state result), as obtained from Deform [4].

PP FM0 1060: Specific rolling force

Fspec_Abaqus Fspec_Deform Fspec_Q3D
18000

16000

14000
Specific Force [N/mm]

12000

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600

Lateral coordinate

Fig. 12: Specific rolling force in lateral direction: Comparison of

results obtained by utilizing ABAQUS[3], Deform[4], self-developed
Pseudo-steady-state Quasi-3D-model [9].

Residual Stresses Finishing Mill

FM0 FM1 FM2 FM3 FM4 FM5 FM6

25.0000

15.0000
Stress S11

5.0000

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

-5.0000

-15.0000
Lateral coordinate

Fig. 13: Residual stress distributions in lateral direction for selected

finishing mill passes (FM0,... FM6): S11 downstream far enough
outside the roll gap, as obtained by utilizing ABAQUS [3].
4. CONCLUSION
Different approaches to 3D off-line modelling of the hot strip rolling process were
presented. For the prediction of 3D-effects during the roughing process of thick slabs, such
as the lateral material flow and spread, the influence of an edger and the formation of
camber due to friction and temperature inhomogeneities in lateral direction, adequate 3D
models are essential. For thick hot slabs and strip, almost any relative strip crown change is
possible without buckling. Therefore, it suffices to first calculate the elasto-plastic strip
formation with prescribed undeformable roll stack contour. For the second step, the
determined 2D contact-pressure distributions between strip and work roll are used as input
for the subsequent elastic roll stack calculations. The result of this calculation already
represents a good approximation of the real conditions at roughing of thick slabs, even
without further iterations. On the contrary, this is not true for the conditions at finishing
passes. Thus, for the offline-prediction of the material flow behaviour in finishing mills,
especially with respect to the lateral strip profile transfer and the formation of residual
stresses inside the strip, highly specialized procedures are of particular interest, where the
deformation of the strip and the elastic response of the rolls have to be coupled iteratively.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The research program of the industrial competence network for “Metallurgical and
Environmental Process Development” (KnetMET) has been financially supported within the
framework of the industrial center of competence and competence network program
(Kind/Knet) of the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, by the provinces of
Upper Austria and Styria and by the Styrian Business Promotion Agency.

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