Elasto-plastic simulation of hot shape rolling of steel by a meshless method

Abstract This paper describes the development of meshless simulation of thermomechanics of steel in a continuous hot rolling process using a novel meshless solution procedure. During the process, steel billets at high temperatures are transferred through multiple roll passes, each with a specific groove shape and roll gap. The major outcome of this simulation system is to design the rolling schedule and confirm whether the final shape is inside the acceptable range. For this purpose, a perpendicular 2D slice model approach is used to obtain fast and reasonably accurate simulation results. A return mapping algorithm solves the elasto-plastic material model with linear hardening to obtain displacements, strains and stresses. They are calculated by the local radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM), which uses the local interpolation of the strong form of partial differential equations. The predefined slice positions are entered into the rolling system, and for each position, the slice contact line and amount of reduction are predicted and used as boundary conditions. Thermal and mechanical models are run sequentially, which is repeated until the final slice position reaches the exit from the last roll. The simulation system was validated with multiple rolling schedules provided by the industrial partner and was successfully used in the steel production plant afterwards. The meshless LRBFCM successfully solves a complex elasto-plastic large deformation problem of hot rolling for the first time.