Temperature distribution of taper rolls in preheating furnace of cold rolling continuous annealing line

In this article, three-dimensional (3-D) transient temperature distributions of taper rolls in a continuous annealing line (CAL) are investigated using finite-element analysis. Since the temperature of the strip is closely related to the surface temperature of the rolls due to the effect of contact heat transfer between them, it is crucial to determine the accurate surface temperature distributions of rolls in CAL. It is found that the temperature history of a roll remains identical and exhibits a radial-dependent distribution as the Peclet number of the roll decreases to a suitable small value, corresponding to a low angular speed of the roll. The computational time for the case with low Peclet number, however, can be significantly reduced. Moreover, it is seen that the results of a two-dimensional (2-D) model are in good agreement with those of the 3-D model in the central region covered with the strip, while the computational time of the former is about one-twentieth of the latter. Consequently, a minimum computational cost can be achieved by using 2-D model with a suitable lower value of Peclet number without sacrificing the accuracy of the simulation results.