Influence of Wall Thickness Fluctuation of Pierced Shell on Continuous Tube Rolling Process of Semi-Floating Mandrel Mill

In continuous tube rolling process, wall thickness reduction per stand will be changed due to wall thickness fluctuation of pierced shell caused by piercing process, which results in changes in metal flow conditions and affects force parameters, deformation parameters, especially transverse wall thickness precision of rolled hollow tube. In this paper, with the aid of commercial FE code MSC.SuperForm, the high pressure boiler steel tube continuous rolling process of a typical hollow tube specification 133.0×4.0mm are simulated based on 133 main pass sequence of 89mm 6-stand semi-floating mandrel mill, and force parameters, equivalent plastic strain, transverse wall thickness precision, outline dimension and real roundness of rolled hollow tube are analyzed and compared on the condition of two different wall thicknesses of pierced shell. Analysis results indicate that force parameters increase with wall thickness of pierced shell, maximal rolling force, rolling moment and mandrel axial force increase 10% or so in the first three stands when rolling pierced shell of wall thickness 11.5mm compared to that of wall thickness 10.5mm. When rolling pierced shell of wall thickness 10.5mm, there exist front and back tensions among the third, the fourth and the fifth stands and outline dimension and real roundness of rolled hollow tube is slightly better. However, transverse wall thickness of rolled hollow tube at the bottom of groove is pulled thin obviously.