An investigation into the rolling process of copper tubes

Abstract Currently a large number of seamless copper tubes are manufactured based on a primary tube obtained by means of a piercing process normally performed using a skewed roll piercer. There may be beneficial economic conditions in manufacturing a primary tube by continuous casting, but the walls of the tube obtained are thick and the material has a coarse-grained structure. This paper investigates the cross-rolling process with a view to applying it to reducing the thickness of the wall of the primary tube obtained by continuous casting. The research is based on analyzing a plane-strain model of the process of a rigid–viscoplastic material using the finite-element method. The zone subjected to plastic deformation is defined based on modeling the geometry of the process, and evidence obtained from preliminary rolling tests is presented in order to confirm the material flow suppositions in the modeling.