Ultrasonic technique for measurement of oil-film thickness in metal cold rolling

Abstract

Lubrication is essential in metal cold rolling operation to regulate friction at the metal-roll interface, reduce energy loss and improve the product surface finish. A novel non-intrusive pitch-catch technique, based on the reflection of ultrasound, was employed on a pilot mill to evaluate oil-film thickness at the metal-roll interface during the metal cold rolling operation. During the metal rolling process, oil-film thickness was measured under varying rolling load and rolling speed. The oil-film thickness increases as the roll speed increases and reduces as the rolling load increases. The values of oil-film thickness obtained from this non-intrusive ultrasonic technique agree with theoretical values. This study is a proof of concept and has shown promising results. If further developed, the technique could be employed for in situ monitoring of lubricant during rolling operation in metal rolling industries.

In-line fluorescence detector for production control in robot-driven environments

“…For example, ultrasonic measurements can measure multiple non-transparent layers 3 but face challenges for adjacent layers of similar density. The technology is not yet ready for the market but promising studies in the field of metal cold rolling 4 suggest that it soon can be. Further, capacitive sensors can be used, as recently demonstrated for the film thickness of lubricants in ball bearings 5 .…”

A comprehensive review of non-destructive methods for bearing lubricating oil film thickness measurement

“…Thus, the spring model can calculate most oil film thicknesses within a specific accuracy range. Exploiting this characteristic, the spring model has been widely applied in monitoring the dynamic changes of oil films (Adeyemi et al, 2022;Zhu et al, 2022).…”

“…Rolling Bearings (Zhang et al 2015a(Zhang et al , 2015b Calibrates the reflection coefficient of the inner ring oil film through ray tracing models 0.1 mm Rolling Bearings (Dou et al, 2022) Assisted measurement using finite element methods 0.01 mm Monitoring oil film thickness under different loads (Adeyemi et al, 2022) Monitoring changes in oil film thickness under different loads 0.01 mm…”