By taking a holistic approach to the development of a physically based thermal model for a tandem cold mill, a new tool has become available that can conveniently answer fundamental questions concerning the optimal design of strip and roll cooling systems. The simulation results included in this article enable the key thermal characteristics of thin strip tandem mills to be identified. These can form the basis of analytical designs for tandem mill coolant systems and thereby avoid unnecessary equipment expenditure or underperforming cooling systems. Many questions that have not been clearly addressed in published literature are answered by the case studies that have been presented for a steel tinplate tandem mill. Clearly there can be significant differences in cooling equipment between mills, and each situation should be analyzed with the appropriate configurations and product characteristics.
展开▼
