2020 Volume 106 Issue 8 Pages 542-548
In hot strip rolling, the work roll (WR) shifting method is widely used to disperse thermal crown and work roll wear. The low WR surface temperature and “insensitivity” to temperature changes not only enable more precise control in the WR shifting method, but also contribute to resource and energy savings.
In this paper, we proposed a WR with temperature buffering function in which hollow roll is filled with phase change material (PCM), and verified its effect with a simple numerical model. In spite of the low volume fraction of 16%, the proposed roll obtained a decrease in roll surface temperature that greatly exceeded the temperature estimated from the amount of heat stored in PCM. This is because the decrease in surface temperature is due not only to the heat storage effect of PCM but also to the temperature leveling effect accompanying the increase in effective thermal conductivity of molten PCM. Therefore, it was suggested that the proposed roll contributes to the refinement of control by the WR shifting method and to resource saving and energy saving.