Three-dimensional temperature distributions of strip in continuous annealing line

In this study, the three-dimensional (3-D) temperature distributions of strip in the whole continuous annealing line (CAL) were evaluated by using the techniques of energy balance method (EBM) and finite element method (FEM). The results show that both the effects of ferrite–austenite phase transition of the steel strip and the thermal contact resistance between the strip and taper rolls have very significant influence upon the distributions of temperature. These taper rolls tend to introduce the non-uniform distributions of the temperature and plastic deformation along both the width and thickness of the strip which are closely related to the phenomenon of warping during punching process. Although the computational time by EBM is very short compared to that by FEM, the results evaluated by these two methods are well consistent.