Discussion of Theoretical Methods to Predict Scale Thickness in Hot Rolling of Steel Strips

Oxidation of iron during hot rolling is inevitable and scale layers are formed on the strip. There are different rate laws of oxidation of iron to predict the scale thickness, in which parabolic rate law and mixed rate law are usually used in hot rolling of strips. As the strip passes through the roll gap, the scale layer can plastically be deformed. Due to limited plasticity of the oxide, cracks through the scale layer can be formed in every roll gap. They open and form new free metallic surfaces which are then oxidized in the interstand. By means of numerical simulations different rate laws of oxidation are compared and the scale deformation with different cases is taken into account. Sensitivity of some rolling parameters to prediction of the scale thickness is discussed in the present paper. Numerical results show that the parabolic rate law overestimates the scale thickness as compared with the mixed rate law and the mixed rate law is not sensitive to the deformation extent of scale.