3D simulation of a hot ring rolling industrial process

Ring rolling is a hot forming process used in the production of railway tyres, anti friction bearing races and different ring shaped workpieces for automotive and aerospace applications. The advantages of ring rolling process include short production time, uniform quality, closed tolerances, good material quality and considerable saving in material cost. Despite the benefits some problems still exist according to a correct selection of the process parameters. Due to the nature of the process different rolling mills (driving roll, mandrel and axial rolls) are involved and the correct selection of the process parameters is not so feasible. Moreover an experimental approach to solve this problem risks to be more expensive. Actually FE codes are available to simulate the non linear problem that characterizes a ring rolling process. In this work a FE model, based on Deform 3D software, was tested versus experimental results acquired from an industrial plant. The accuracy of the FE model was analyzed through a dual comparison: by geometrical and by physical aspects. A good agreement was found between the experimental and the numerical results for both comparisons and, as a consequence, this code could be used in order to investigate and optimize the process parameters that characterize the ring rolling process in a virtual not expensive environment.