An Analytical Model for Stress and Curvature Prediction of a Strip Leveling Process

An analytical model of a steel strip under alternate bending/reverse bending during a roller leveling process is developed. A combined isotropic/kinematic hardening model is implemented through a combined hardening parameter. A formulation of the change of the effective stress as a function of the change of the effective strain under cyclic loading is combined with the developed analytical model to predict the stress distributions and residual curvature of a steel strip under roller leveling efficiently and accurately. Dissimilar to the commonly used assumption of one contact point between the stripe and the rolls, an effective radius modelling the wrap-around contact characteristics is proposed. An arc contact of the strip around a roll is described by the contact model. An oscillatory behavior of the residual curvature is observed when a range of roll intermesh setting is considered. The contact model added to the analytical model may enhance the accuracy in predicting the oscillatory behavior of the residual curvatures. A range of the roll intermesh setting can be suggested by the developed model to obtain a flat strip after roller leveling.