The cold rolling mills of Aperam South America are equipped with mandrels which have the function of sustaining the coil load and torque transmission from the motor. The mandrels are equipped with mechanisms called grippers, whose function is to grip the tail of the strip at the beginning of the wrapping process and thus permit the winding tension application. The current winding practice considers that tension application can only be started after the wrapping up of at least 1.5 turns of the strip onto the mandrel, which generates a decline in the physical performance of the rolling mills. A methodology was developed to measure the friction between the strip and the surface of the mandrel, under approximate industrial conditions in order to further studies for evaluating madrel gripper capacity under an applied tension of less than one turn of the strip around the mandrel. A near-scale physical model was built, which was subjected to experimental tests involving segments of mandrels from two mills. The results of the average friction at the interface strip and mandrel are consistent with those found in literature.
Mill; mandrel; gripper
