Modeling the Effect of Lubricants on Surface Conditions in Plane-Strain Upsetting Tests

Abstract:

Skin-pass rolling is commonly used to adjust the surface quality of high-strength aluminum alloys. Lubrication plays an important role in this process, as it minimizes material adhesion to the work roll, extends its service life, and also influences the contact conditions and the final surface topography. However, most numerical studies represent lubrication only through an effective friction coefficient. In this work, a finite-element framework that explicitly accounts for lubricant entrapment in engineered surface pockets by using a coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) approach is introduced to investigate lubricant-topography interaction. The skin-pass rolling process is approximated by a plane-strain upsetting test to represent the parameters relevant for mapping the interaction between lubricant and mechanical stress, as the rolling process has a large number of influencing factors. The precipitation-hardenable aluminum alloy EN AW-6016 is modeled with rate-dependent plasticity based on experimental flow curves, while the lubricant is represented as a Eulerian material governed by an equation-of-state formulation. The effects of strain rate, friction and different lubricant filling levels in surface pockets are analyzed. The results show that variations in friction mainly affect the global force level, while the presence of lubricant leads to changes in local deformation and stress distributions. Fully filled pockets require higher forming forces due to lubricant compression, whereas partially filled pockets show behavior close to dry conditions. The CEL approach proves suitable for modeling lubricated plane-strain upsetting tests and provides a basis for further investigations of lubricated skin-pass rolling processes.

• Periodical: Materials Science Forum (Volume 1184)
• Pages: 53-64
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/p-7lTOao
• Online since: April 2026
• Authors: Lena Koch*, Holger Brüggemann, Shakthi Bharani Tamilselvan, Emad Scharifi, Junhe Lian
• Keywords: Aluminum, Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian, FEM, Roughness, Skin-Pass Rolling

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