The heavy shell ring rolling mill which produces the large shell ring used in nuclear power, large-scale hydrogenation reactor and coal liquefaction reactor was taken as subject investigated. Because the size of shell ring is very large and the material of shell ring is special, the double drive rolls was taken in the shell ring rolling mill. Based on the elastic-plastic FEM and MARC software platform, the three dimensional thermal-mechanical coupled model of shell ring rolling process was built in this paper. First, the heat simulation text of the shell ring material has been carried out on the Gleeble-3500 thermal simulation test machine and the material properties were obtained. Then, considering the characteristics of heavy shell ring hot rolling mill with two drive rolls, the key problems such as geometry, material and thermo-boundary conditions were solved, the thermo-mechanical coupled finite element model of heavy shell ring hot rolling has been establised. At last, based on explicit dynamic FEM, the thermo-mechanical simulation of heavy shell ring rolling process was made. The stress field, strain field and temperature field were studied, the metal plastic deformation and its influence factors were investigated. The conclusions are agreement with the real rolling process. The conclusions are significant for designing equipments of shell ring rolling mill and developing new rolling schedule.
REMOVED: Development of an experimental ring rolling mill and associated instrumentation