An investigation of descaling spray on microstructural evolution in hot rolling

High pressure water spray is used to remove oxide scales in hot rolling of steel plate. This would reduce the temperature temporarily on the workpiece surface. To investigate the effect of temperature variation due to the descaling spray on the microstructural evolution, a thermal-mechanical coupled FE model has been established. The heat loss due to the spray is experimentally measured and modelled using the established FE model. The heat transfer coefficient is determined using an inverse engineering method. A set of unified viscoplastic constitutive equations is implemented into the commercial FE solver MARC through the user-defined subroutine CRPLAW. The effect of descaling water spray on the surface temperature variation is numerically studied. Furthermore, the effect of surface temperature variation on the evolution of dislocation density, recrystallisation and grain growth is investigated for various hot rolling conditions.