Lubrication of Aluminum Rolling by Oil-in-Water Emulsions

The dynamic concentration model for lubrication by oil-in-water emulsions proposed by Wilson el al. (1) is applied to strip rolling to derive a relatively simple equation for inlet film thickness. The predictions of the new model are supported by rolling experiments using emulsions as lubricants, where the film thickness is inferred from the surface roughness that is generated on the workpiece during rolling. The experiments also seem to suggest that the efficiency of oil droplet capture increases with increasing rolling speed.