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Steel for a fossil-free future
Luleå University of Technology
Co-financed by Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth
With funding from the EU

Modelling stress-strain evolution during hot-rolling mills

Schematic of SSAB's mini-mills for producing steel slabs. Courtesy SSAB

ICME Modelling of mini mills: starting from finite element analysis

Background

Looking towards the future, steel companies will be rethinking the design concepts for their next generation of hot rolling mills. For example, to produce rolled steel after the hybrid process, SSAB will build mini-mills. These mini mills will cast thinner slabs with reduced heating. Despite the new process constraints, the ambition is to process steel grades that have the same high-end mechanical properties as today's value-added steel products.

This project

Starting with finite element models, this project will model future rolling processes in order to provide input to the design of future mini mills.

Research questions

This work package's research questions are informed by the need to produce steel products with equivalent, or better, properties than today's ... with fossil-free processes. Thus, the research questions that this project aims to answer are:

  • Will the changes made to the rolling process in the new mini-mills have any impact on the steel’s final mechanical properties?

  • What further modifications can be made to the process to ensure uniform mechanical properties in the transverse direction?

Research approach

The research approach will be to

  • Shape finite element simulations of current and future rolling processes

  • Couple the finite element simulations to thermomechanical simulations, which consider the effect of temperature on deformations

  • Refine this coupled model by including a material-model, where that material-model will have dislocation density key variable. 

This refined model will provide yield stress information given by dislocation density, grain size, and other quantities familiar in material science. And, thereby, enable the rolling mill's effects on the steel product's bulk mechanical properties to be coupled to lower scales. Modelling work involving coupling to thermomechanical simulations and the material model will be done in collaboration with other work packages.

People

John Larsson
Erik Olsson
Erik Olsson PhD supervisor, Assoc Professor erik.1.olsson@ltu.se

This project will also be supported by Jonas Edberg, an expert in hot-rolling simulations, and SSAB's Torbjörn Narström.