A contribution to roll pass design optimisation in hot steel rolling technology

Hot steel rolling techniques continue to develop because rolling is amongst the most widely used industrial methods and steel is a most recycled material. Moreover, rolling mills are critical polluters and major resource consumers, which all requires introducing significant rationalisations in the relevant manufacturing processes. Roll pass design is a principal factor that delimits process efficiency, product quality and resource consumption. Therefore it is important to optimise roll pass design including the selection of roll materials. New avenues for improving roll pass design are to be found by extracting knowledge buried in the vast of industrial records. Significant improvements can be identified by intelligent mathematical translations that enhance analyses of rolling campaigns and series. A review of roll pass design criteria is presented. Examples of roll pass design analytical functions are introduced along with a demonstration of their use in analysing database covering series of symmetrical products. An example of extracted knowledge is presented and scrutinised using methods of mathematical statistics.