Wear of Cylinders in Tractive Rolling Contact and Implications for Modelling Back up Roll Wear in Steel Cold Rolling Mills

Delivering consistent product quality and optimising processing conditions in a cold rolling mill requires a proper understanding of back up roll wear. This contribution describes the development of an analytical wear model in rolling contact that integrates the contact mechanics of tractive rolling and Archard’s wear model. The model is developed for two facing cylinders. Then this model is expanded to non-cylindrical rolls representing an actual work roll/back up roll situation in a cold rolling mill. Our model is fast enough for on-line use. Our results show that speed difference in the work roll/back up roll interface is the most critical factor and the speed difference can be established from an analysis of the power transmitted at this interface. Our results indicate that a further (experimental) investigation of friction at this interface and the sensitivity to wear of the backup roll is required for a successful application of our model.