Journal of Materials Processing Technology 209 (2009) 44764483

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

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Surface wrinkle defect of carbon steel in the hot bar rolling process
Hyuck-Cheol Kwon a , Ho-Won Lee b , Hak-Young Kim c , Yong-Taek Im b, , Hae-Doo Park a , Duk-Lak Lee d
Rolling Technology and Process Control Group, POSCO Technical Research Laboratories, POSCO, 1, Goedongdong, Namgu, Pohang, Gyeongbuk 790-785, Republic of Korea b National Research Laboratory for Computer Aided Materials Processing, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 373-1, Gusongdong, Yusonggu, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea c Advanced Technology Department, Hyundai Mobis Technical Research Institute, 80-10, Mabukdong, Giheunggu, Yongin, Gyeonggi 449-912, Republic of Korea d Wire Rod Research Group, POSCO Technical Research Laboratories, POSCO, 1, Goedongdong, Namgu, Pohang, Gyeongbuk 790-785, Republic of Korea
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a b s t r a c t
It is well known that surface defect is a common problem encountered in the multi-stage hot bar rolling process of carbon steel. In this study, the phenomenon was investigated by simulating the process by the nite element technique to identify the location where the surface defect might occur and checking the surface qualities obtained from the compression tests at various temperatures and strain rates to clarify the important parameter governing the possible surface defect formation. Also, the surface temperature was measured by employing pyrometer to support the experimental observation. The levels of temperature and specic deformation energy obtained from nite element simulations depending on the roll groove geometry were compared with the experimental observation to better understand the formation of the surface defect in the hot rolled bar. Based on this study, the surface defect might be formed by dissipating the excessive deformation energy accumulated by generating the new surface at the lower level of temperature where recrystallization cannot occur. According to this work, the comparison of the specic deformation energy level for determining the instability of the hot working process might be interesting for further investigation. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Accepted 6 October 2008 Keywords: Surface wrinkle defect Hot bar rolling Specic deformation energy Instability

1. Introduction Workability for hot deformation depends on both the material characteristics such as grain size, billet geometry, and distribution of secondary phase and the processing characteristics such as strain, strain rate, stress, and temperature. For cold deformation, the processing characteristics are more important than the material characteristics to govern the workability. In steel company, surface defect in the multi-stage hot bar rolling is one of critical problems to be solved for quality assurance of the rolled product. The surface defect, which is frequently encountered in the hot bar rolling of steel, can easily develop into a fatal manufacturing defect during the secondary cold forging process of bar stocks as shown in Fig. 1. Thus, it is necessary to minimize such defect formations on the surface of hot rolled bars. Although many researchers had paid attention to understand and solve the problems, the phenomenon is not quite well understood yet because of many deformation stages of roughing, intermediate roughing, inter-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 42 869 3237; fax: +82 42 869 3210. E-mail address: ytim@kaist.ac.kr (Y.-T. Im). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2008.10.032

mediate nishing, and nishing mill to produce hot rolled bars as shown in Fig. 2. Schey (1980) described that cracking of the billet in rolling, whether in the form of edge or surface cracking, or damage to the billet center, invariably resulted in increased crap and production costs. In this work, it was concluded that through thickness inhomogeneity resulted into surface or center cracks, whereas lateral inhomogeneity into edge cracking. From the comparison of bend test specimens with edge cracking by the help of metallographic observations, Fitzsimons and Kuhn (1984) pointed out that edge cracks were observed in the hot bar rolling at high strain rates. Crowther and Mintz (1986) had investigated the change of ductility at various temperatures depending on carbon contents of the material. Barlow et al. (1984) also discussed main rolling defects observed both during rolling and on nished rolled bars. They related defect formations to ingot casting such that if the molten metal was not poured carefully into the ingot at the proper temperature or not allowed to cool in a controlled environment, it might result into a longitudinal crack or seam along the bar. Hassani and Yue (1993) claimed that surface cracks were oxidized in the air in ingot casting, resulting in defects that lowered the surface quality of the nal product. For rolling in a blooming mill, Milman et al. (1979) estab-

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Fig. 1. Surface crack observed and upset specimen.

Fig. 2. Schematic of a typical modern rod mill (Lee, 2004).

lished that the cause of formation of corner cracks in ingots was due to a combination of three main factors such as an unfavorable stress state pattern with the presence of tensile stresses, local thermal stresses of the same sign, and mechanical concentrators for those stresses. Kawano et al. (1999) used thermal and mechanical nite element (FE) simulations for calculating the temperature change in ve different roll pass designs. They discussed that temperature was the most signicant processing parameter to control surface cracks and recommended roll pass design with least temperature drop during rolling for reducing surface cracks. Kawanishi et al. (1999) also added parameter of rolling speed for decreasing surface cracking. By the help of nite element investigation, Mantyla et al. (1993) concluded that the metallurgical aspect showed that uneven plastic deformation and residual stresses after each pass of deformation will lead to inhomogeneous recrystallization and variations of mechanical properties through the thickness of the material resulted to defects of cross waves and ski-ends impairing the quality of hot rolled at products. Atkins (1996) added that not only metallurgy but also mechanics and strain ratios during an operation could have a profound effect on cracking. Topno et al. (2002)
Table 1 Chemical composition of steel used. C wt% 0.090 Si 0.028 Mn 0.458 P 0.014 S 0.005 Cu 0.009 Al 0.062 Fig. 3. Location of surface defects in the cross-section of the crop in the roughing mill.

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Fig. 4. Location of surface defects in the cross-section of the crop in the roughing mill.

Fig. 5. Micrograph of defects in the cross-section of the crop in the roughing mill.

discussed generation of surface defects and corrective measures observed in the bar mill. Recently, Kim and Im (2002) developed and validated non-isothermal shape rolling nite element program which was named CAMProll. By the aid of CAMProll, Lee et al. (2007) reconsidered conventional plastic work, generally used as a ductile fracture criterion in the cold working process, as an instability criterion to predict the surface wrinkle defect during multi-pass hot bar rolling.

In the present study, the defect formation was investigated in terms of the location and type. The temperature variations were determined experimentally and numerically to better understand the mechanism of surface cracking phenomenon. The hot compres-

Fig. 6. Traced location of defect in the rst stage of the roughing mill.

Fig. 7. Measured surface temperatures in the center and edge of the billet before and after the 1st stage of the roughing mill.

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Fig. 8. FEM analysis result of the 1st stage of the roughing mill: (a) effective strain, (b) effective strain rate (1/s), (c) effective stress (MPa) and (d) temperature ( C).

sion tests of cylindrical specimens were carried out up to 50 and 70% reductions in height at various temperatures and strain rates to determine the important processing parameter to understand the surface defect formation. The effect of roll geometry on the maximum specic deformation energy accumulated and temperature distribution was numerically examined. The numerical result was compared well with the observed industrial data. 2. Analysis of surface crack encountered Fig. 1 shows the surface defect observed after the roughing mill of the hot bar rolling process. In the same gure the cracking of the billet after upsetting of the cylindrical cut of the same bar is given. In industry, it is not easy to detect such a surface defect in the middle of production because it is hidden under the skin of the surface and very thin like hair. In Table 1, the chemical composition of the material investigated is given. In order to investigate the cause of forming such cracks, multistage of the roughing mill was carefully examined to determine the possible location where these cracks occurred. As shown in Fig. 3, the most likely places of possible cracking were determined by the inverse nite element simulations using CAMProll as two regions, which formed 70 left and right from the eccentric centerline. This eccentric centerline was the same as the normal axis rotated in counterclockwise to the axis of the roll gap for the last stage of the roughing mill. The cracking occurred at the skewed

places from the normal axis due to the torsional effect during rolling. In Fig. 4, the cross-sectional views of the bar are given. According to this gure the surface cracks look like a concave shape, which is different from normal shape of the surface line crack. Thus, it was understood that such a crack was formed in an earlier stage due to the instability of the surface deformation during rolling instead of

Fig. 9. Strain and temperature history in the edge and center of the billet.

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Fig. 10. Micrographs of the cross-section of compressed specimens (reduction in height: 50%).

Fig. 11. Micrographs of the cross-section of compressed specimens (reduction in height: 70%).

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Fig. 12. Load stroke curves obtained from compression tests with various strain rates for temperatures of (a) 800 C, (b) 900 C, and (c) 1000 C.

regular cracking. This kind of concave shapes will be compressed in the subsequent deformation stage to form the line cracks as shown in Fig. 5. Thus, such a defect is called here a wrinkle defect in the present investigation. In industry, it was very difcult to nd out where this kind of wrinkle defects is formed because of the continuous rolling line. Therefore, in the present investigation, the multi-stage bar rolling process was simulated by employing CAMProll to determine the stage and location where the wrinkle defect might be formed. The material data used for simulation was obtained from the previous work. According to FE simulations, the defect might be initiated at the rst stage of roughing mill and located at near the corner edge of the billet according to the levels of temperature drop and plastic deformation as shown in Fig. 6. The temperature drop was measured by pyrometer before and after rolling and simulated by the FE program during rolling as well. After the reheating furnace, the billet was passed through the descaler stand and provided into the rst stage of roughing mill. At the descaler stand, the pressurized water was sprayed onto the billet in order to take off the scale from the billet surface. Fig. 7 shows the temperature variations at the edge and center areas as introduced in Fig. 6 before and after rolling. According to this gure, the measured temperature at the edge area was lower than that at the center area. This was obvious because of the heat loss at the edge area due to large surface areas through radiation and convection. The temperature change at the center area was minimal compared to around 50100 C at the edge area. Inside the billet, the temperature drop of around 70 C was higher in the tail part of the billet compared to the front part due to longer disposure to the coolant at the descaler stand. According to the observation in industry, the defect was noticeable at the tail part as well. The effect of processing parameters during rolling was investigated with the FE simulations in terms of strain, strain rate, stress, and temperature as shown in Fig. 8. At the rst stage of rolling, the rolling speed was relatively lower than the one at other stages, resulting in the higher temperature drop due to relatively longer roll contact with the billet. At the edge corner area, the specic deformation energy and temperature were at maximum and minimum, respectively, because of the thermal contact with rolls. The temperature variations obtained from measurements before and after rolling and from simulations during rolling are summarized in Fig. 9. According to this gure, the temperature at the edge corner area was drastically decreased during rolling and recovered after rolling due to redistribution of the heat but the level was lowered than the one at the entry level. However, the temperature at the center area was increased during rolling due to heat generation of plastic deformation and reduced in small amount compared to the one at the entry level. According to this analysis, it can be

Fig. 13. Mechanism of the wrinkle defect generation during the multi-pass hot rolling.

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Fig. 14. Specic deformation energy and temperature distribution: (a) Caliber 1, (b) Caliber 2, (c) notication of position (P1 means Position 1), and (d) roll and billet shapes.

construed that instability of the deformation might be likely at the edge corner area because of higher plastic deformation at lower processing temperatures. 3. Hot compression tests Because of the similarity of the stress conditions at the free surface in rolling and simple compression tests, the instability conditions were looked into by carrying out the hot compression tests. The tests were carried out using Gleeble-3800 at the POSCO technical research laboratory with their help. In Table 2, the testing conditions are clearly introduced. The specimen was made of a cylinder with diameter of 10 mm and height of 15 mm. The strain rate was set to be 1 s1 and reductions of height were 50 and 70%, respectively. The temperatures of the specimens were varied from 600 to 1000 C with the increment of 50 C. The heating was increased 10 C per second and specimen was homogenized for 60 s. The specimens were quenched for 2 or 3 s after the compression to obtain better microstructure. Depending on compression conditions, surface qualities were varied. In order to determine the surface quality, the cross-section was photographed by the optical microscopy and shown in Figs. 10 and 11. At 50% reduction, the surface was very smooth at temperatures of 900 and 1000 C. However, the surface was wavy at temperatures of 700 and 800 C. This phenomenon was more dominant for 70% reductions. This can be interpreted from the point of energy dissipation. At hot deformation, the surface was clean because of consumption of the deformation energy through recrystallization as conrmed in the load stroke curves in compression in Fig. 12. However, at

Table 2 Experimental conditions investigated. Parameters Reduction in height Strain rate Temperature Specimen dimension Levels 50, 70 (%) 1 (1/s) 6001000 ( C) 10 mm 15 mm (diameter height)

Fig. 15. (a) Roll grooves and billet geometry, and (b) maximum specic deformation energy.

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cold deformation, higher deformation energy might be dissipated through the surface expansion, inducing the instability and causing the irregular surface quality as demonstrated illustrated in Fig. 13. 4. Process simulations Since the major processing parameters investigated so far were related to the levels of the temperature and specic deformation energy, the effect of roll groove geometries on these two terms was investigated. The computational results were qualitatively compared with the industrial observation of surface cracking phenomenon. In Fig. 14, simulation results are given for the rolling of the initial billet with the corner radius of 8 mm with two different types of the rolls (the one with regular width and the other with increased width). By increasing the width of rolls, it was found out that the maximum specic deformation energy level was decreased from 90 to 70 MPa and the temperature levels were higher. This data was reasonable according to the industrial observations that the surface cracking was reduced by increasing the width of rolls. Thus, it might be worthwhile to look into more carefully the possibility to use the specic deformation energy as a decision criterion to judge the formation of surface cracking at the hot bar rolling. In Fig. 15, the effect of magnitude of the roll groove radius and width of the roll geometry on plastic deformation level is given. In simulations, the widths were varied as 184, 190, and 196 mm and the roll groove radii as 16, 25, and 35 mm. As shown in this gure, the maximum specic deformation energy was obtained for the case with the width of 184 mm and roll groove radius of 35 mm. Under the present investigation, it was found out the specic deformation energy level decreased as the width and roll groove radius of the roll were increased and decreased, respectively. 5. Conclusions In the present investigation, the surface defect was identied as wrinkle defect occurred at the earlier stage of roughing mill in the hot bar rolling process and the forming mechanism of such defect was investigated with the help of recrystallization behavior. This was conrmed with the hot compression tests. The instability was correlated with the level of the specic deforma-

tion energy under the present investigation condition. According to the simulation results, temperature and specic deformation energy levels were most important parameters to govern the formation of surface defect. Finally, it was found out that the specic deformation energy level was dependent with the roll geometry. Thus, by modifying the roll geometry, the instability can be reduced according to the limiting value of specic deformation energy. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank for the grants from the POSCO and Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) through the National Research Laboratory Program funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology (No. R0A-2006-000-10240-0). The technical support of the POSCO to carry out the hot compression tests was very much appreciated. References
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