Intended Dishing in Ring Rolling

Ring Rolling is a versatile metal-forming process to manufacture seamless rings of various cross-sectional geometries. Rings with a “dish shape” are used in different areas such as offshore, aeronautics or the energy sector. Current ways to produce dish shaped rings have the disadvantages of limited or inflexible geometries and either high material waste, additional costs for special tools or long process time. Instead, when manufacturing dish shaped rings on conventional radial-axial ring rolling mills, ring producers will be able to expand the range of their products easily. In a prior investigation, the general feasibility of an alternative to the current manufacturing processes was shown in experiments and in finite element method (FEM) simulations, avoiding major additional machining and material costs. Resulting from an analysis of the geometrical requirements and material flow mechanisms for dishing and ring climbing, a rolling strategy was derived, applying a large height reduction of the ring. A major problem of this rolling strategy is that whenever the contact between the ring and the main roll is lost in the process, the ring starts to oscillate around the mandrel and neither dishing nor ring climbing can be observed. In order to ensure a permanent contact between ring and main roll and in order to stabilize the ring in its inclined position in the rolling mill, additional stabilizing measures of the process will be developed and investigated. With the developed FE-model, a stabilizing measure by the use of pressure rolls and automatic guide roll movement for ring climbing was tested and appears promising for the application in a real experimental environment.