A new transducer for local load measurements of friction and roll pressure in cold flat rolling

The only way to establish the true rolling pressure and the true friction condition in cold rolling is to conduct measurements in the roll bite. A new transducer design is therefore proposed, in order to overcome problems in previous measurements in the past 70 years. The new idea is to increase the contact surface of the transducer, to be larger than the arc of contact. This is in contrast to the smaller and smaller contact pin design that has been prevailing. The measurements were conducted during cold dry rolling of both copper strips and stainless steel strips in a pilot mill. The recordings were selected from a steady state with no disturbance from the material flow. The transducer was able to simultaneously measure both the normal pressure and the friction stress. An estimation of the coefficient of friction was accordingly performed. The new transducer works very well, it was seen to be robust and able to avoid signal disturbance. The pressure and friction stress distribution results was as expected by the authors and showed good reproducibility, together with a proven agreement between recorded and simulated signals.