Design aspects and parametric study of 3-roll heavy-duty plate-bending machines

Abstract

The fabricated stands of a three-roll heavy duty plate bending machine under load have been studied and a parametric study has been performed on them. The two machines analyzed are capable of cold rolling 14 and 40 mm thick plates. The FEM was used to study the static response of the stands when the machine is in operation, and three-noded triangular plate elements were used for this purpose. The response was computed for the worst case of loading. Cholesky's method in conjunction with the skyline approach was used to study the behaviour of the stand by solving the large-size problem. The objective of the parametric study was to evaluate the performance of the machine stands in relation to various design- or structural-modification and arrive at a satisfactory design.