Deformation mechanism of cold ring rolling in view of texture evolution predicted by a newly proposed polycrystal plasticity model

An explicit polycrystal plasticity model was proposed to investigate the deformation mechanism of cold ring rolling in view of texture evolution. The model was created by deducing a set of linear incremental controlling equations within the framework of crystal plasticity theory. It was directly solved by a linear algorithm within a two-level procedure so that its efficiency and stability were guaranteed. A subroutine VUMAT for ABAQUS/Explicit was developed to combine this model with the 3D FE model of cold ring rolling. Results indicate that the model is reliable in predictions of stress-strain response and texture evolution in the dynamic complicated forming process; the shear strain in RD of the ring is the critical deformation mode according to the sharp Goss component （{110}？100？） of deformed ring; texture and crystallographic structure of the ring blank do not affect texture type of the deformed ring;texture evolves rapidly at the later stage of rolling, which results in a dramatically increasing deformation of the ring.

Role of Friction in Cold Ring Rolling

Cold ring rolling is an advanced but complex metal forming process under coupled effects with multi-factors, such as geometry sizes of rolls and ring blank, material, forming process parameters and friction, etc. Among these factors, friction between rolls and ring blank plays an important role in keeping the stable forming of cold ring rolling. An analytical method was firstly presented for proximately determining the critical friction coefficient of stable forming and then a method was proposed to determine the critical friction coefficient by combining analytical method with numerical simulation. And the influence of friction coefficient on the quality of end-plane and side spread of ring,rolling force, rolling moment and metal flow characteristic in the cold ring rolling process have been explored using the three dimensional （3D） numerical simulation based on the elastic-plastic dynamic finite element method （FEM） under the ABAQUS software environment, and the results show that increasing the friction on the contact surfaces between rolls and ring blank is useful not only for improving the stability of cold ring rolling but also for improving the geometry and dimension precision of deformed ring.

Hourglass Control in Dynamic Explicit Simulation of Cold Ring Rolling Process

Hourglass is remarkably aroused in ring rolling simulation with reduced integration element because of violent ring vibration and small contact area of ring with forming rollers. Hourglass energy can be reduced by improving mesh density. Combined approach of artificial damping and artificial stiffness can control the hourglass. A ring with rectangular section is simulated with the weight factor of artificial stiffness resistance set to 0.2. The artificial damping hourglass control coefficient is set to 0.1, and the artificial stiffness hourglass control coefficient is set to 0.001. The ratio of hourglass energy to internal energy is reduced to 2.5 percent. Compared with axial spread width test, the effectiveness of hourglass control in ring rolling simulation is verified.