Process design and finite element analysis of multi-station two-roller cassette hot rolling for aluminum alloy 6061 wire

Abstract

In this paper, a round-oval-round roller cassette wire rolling process of the aluminum alloy 6061 was studied for the process and the roller design evaluation. The elliptic groove of roller was designed for the stand of oval cross-sectional profiles. The billet diameter for this 10- stand rolling process simulation is 20mm. The diameters for the round cross-section profile stands are 16mm,12.8mm,10.2mm,8.2mm, and 6mm, respectively. The forming conditions for the CAE simulation is 400 °C for billet temperature, 0.45 for the constant shear friction factor, 20mm/s for the initial rolling speed. The CAE (Computer Aided Engineering, CAE) results had shown the maximum dimension deviation of the billet is less than 0.25 mm at the location of the roller gap and almost perfect match at the other locations. The maximum principal stress distribution on the cross section had shown a two third area was deformed under the rolling process. The CAE results had demonstrated the proposed process and die design was able to make the smaller wire with good geometrical accuracy without breaking the wire during the rolling process because of the more uniform stress distribution at the cross section of wire.