An experimental investigation on the influence of lubrication on roughness transfer in skin-pass rolling of steel strip

Skin-pass rolling (or temper rolling) is usually the final process in the production of cold-rolled steel sheets. In operation, skin-pass rolling is performed with roughened rolls, using a lubricant with a very low lubricating ability. However, relatively few studies in the literature have examined the effect of lubrication in skin-pass rolling. In this paper, the influence of lubrication on elongation and roughness transfer in skin-pass rolling is investigated by experimental rolling tests in which the relationship between lubrication behavior and the roll radius is clarified. As in a previous study of smooth rolls, the results with large, operational size rolls can be explained convincingly by height characterization parameters and are considered to be reasonable. It was also found that some characteristics of skin-pass rolling related to lubrication are not properly simulated using small radius, laboratory size rolls due to the insufficient contact length between the rolls and the workpiece.