WHEN FLAT ISN’T FLAT –

EQUALIZING INTERNAL STRESSES THROUGH ROLLER LEVELING

BY

JAMIE WOLLENBERG*

JIM SUGARS**
SYNOPSIS:

Around the globe, world-class manufacturers struggle to provide flat material to downstream
customers such as laser houses, automotive parts manufacturers, etc. What looks flat off the Cut-
to-Length (CTL) line, when cut on the plasma or laser, is found to be anything but flat! The
problem is residual stress in the steel.

This white paper will discuss newly developed methods of equalizing the internal stress to allow
the strip to stay flat after secondary operations. Implementing these innovative technologies
enables an operator to understand the strip condition more fully than ever before. Operators can
better adjust their equipment, and in some cases do so automatically, to equalize the internal stress
state of the material. Embracing the Industry 4.0 revolution to bring technology and value to coil
processing organizations will provide end-users with the flat product they require, while
developing growth and success throughout the supply chain.

Keywords: Coil Processing, Cut-to-Length, Roller Leveling, eDrive®, Internal Stress,

Flat Sheets, Industry 4.0

* Research and Development Engineer - B.A. Mathematics, Bethany College & M.S.
Mechanical Engineering, Wichita State University - The Bradbury Company, Moundridge, KS,
USA

** Industry Sales Leader, Flat Products - B.A. Grace University - The Bradbury Company,
Moundridge, KS, USA

1
Introduction
The Bradbury Group

The Bradbury Group of manufacturing companies are dedicated to producing high-quality,

productivity-enhancing metal processing equipment for customers around the world. With 11
manufacturing facilities globally and a presence in 17 countries, Bradbury’s global reach is critical
in providing equipment solutions to meet today’s quality requirements.

Based in Moundridge, KS, USA, the Bradbury Group strives to set the standard for automated
production and systems integration for the metal processing industry. Whether the equipment is
built to level, slit, cutoff, punch, fold, or roll form, Bradbury’s automated systems have achieved
the pinnacle of productivity, reliability, and safety in metal processing for nearly 60 years.

Our decades of experience in the coil industry, including over 300 successful leveling applications,
have provided incredible opportunities to develop and prove modern technologies. By equipping
the leveler with more feedback than ever before and implementing unique machine design and
control schemes to optimize the working load delivered to the material, Bradbury has set the global
standard for roller leveling performance.

Leveling goals and means

Flatness defects in coil steel are virtually universal, and infinitely variable. With names like ‘coil
set, cross bow, center buckle, and edge wave’, they create visual and/or dimensional flaws, whose
inclusion in a finished product cannot be allowed. Seemingly flat material can harbor internal
stresses, causing defects to re-appear after secondary processes, so the goal of a leveler is to
neutralize these internal stresses. Making a visually flat sheet isn’t enough; the stress memory of
the material must be reset in such a way that further processes will not expose trapped stresses.
Figures 1-3 show some common flatness defects, the results of the leveling process, and the
consequences when leveling is not properly executed.

Traditionally there have been three main leveling processes utilized to accomplish the stress
equalization goal. Roller leveling (mechanical or hydraulic), tension leveling, and stretch leveling.
They all ultimately work by yielding a material cross section in tension and/or compression, so
that the defective material memory is removed, and a memory reset can be implemented for stress
neutral results. Temper mills are another material conditioning method that have somewhat similar
goals, but work through fundamentally different mechanisms, and normally require roller levelers
after the mill to provide exceptional steel.

Roller leveling is the most popular leveling method; prized for a wide range of materials which
can be processed with excellent throughputs. Roller leveling is limited to the bending stress
method, which has inherent limitations as to what range of material strengths and defects could be
effectively redressed. Differential engagement of material over rolls down the length of the leveler
also generates speed variation which puts excessive stress on the drive train.

2
Materials and Methods
New stress equalization methods in roller leveling

Over the last 10 years, multi-drive leveling systems have become popular in the roller leveling
industry to address these issues. Synergy® by Butech Bliss is one example of a multi-drive system.
Each roll of the leveler has an independent gear-motor that can be set at a different speed from the
other drives. This system can resolve the variable speed problem that traditional levelers
experience, sometimes referred to as roll wrap differential, leading to meaningful electricity
savings and improved machine longevity.

eDrive® by Bradbury is the first and only leveler to use patented (U.S. Patent No. 8,893,537)
torque monitoring controls to generate a deliberate torque differential between drive clusters at the
entry and exit of the machine. This carefully controller difference creates a focused tensile pull
on the material around the split point in the drive train, causing extra tension in the strip, to increase
the net plasticity accomplished by the leveler. This approach is also incredibly energy efficient by
putting the entry drive roll cluster into a regenerative condition, leading to results of over 300%
more steel output per kW of energy put into the leveler. The additional tensile work delivered to
the strip also produces the highest quality of leveled product, with observed I-Unit improvement
ratios exceeding 100:1 in independent tests. Figure 4 demonstrates multiple products that were
successfully processed using this method.

Evaluation of material behaviors

To understand how the addition of tension to the roller leveling process can produce such dramatic
results, it is first necessary to understand the mechanics of the leveling process. To produce a
permanent change in the material shape, the yield stress of the material must be exceeded.
Depending on the severity of the material defect, many yield strains may be necessary to equalize
the stress. Most defects can be addressed by yielding 80-90% of the material cross section, which
equates to 5-10 yield strains in the outer fibers of the material. Figures 5-7 illustrate typical yield
stress/strain relationships.

For mild steel, this relationship between cross section yielded and strain is of minimal importance.
The leveler usually has enough power, and the material suitable ductility, to enable excessive roll
plunge to create enough bending stress to correct various defects. However, as the strength of the
material increases, the range of strains the material can handle is quickly diminished, as shown in
Figure 8. While mild steels may accommodate hundreds of yield strains before failing, many dual
phase steels with yield strengths exceeding 800 MPa will fail after only 10-20 yield strains. As
the yield strength of materials continue to increase, the window in which conventional roller
levelers can effectively work material without damage is shrinking.

3
Quantitative evaluation of tension in high performance leveling

To expand the range and effectiveness of roller leveling, additional plastic work must come from
some source other than bending stress. This is the primary value of the patented eDrive® system.
Figure 9 shows a theoretical sample of material 1mm thick in a natural flat state. Figure 10 details
the bending strain state of the material at different depths, and how these strains relate to the 80%
of the cross section being yielded. Figure 11 then shows the amount of extra strain the material
must endure to yield 90% of the cross section using pure bending. This dramatic increase in strain
on the product is undesirable for many reasons. It is energy inefficient as the machine is doing a
tremendous amount of plastic work to the material, for minimal gain to the cross section yielded.
The outer edges of the material are also being worked to a point where yield scattering, work
hardening, and even fracture may occur in high strength products. To improve the yielding of the
material without inducing these problems, the extra energy to yield the material must come from
tension rather than bending.

Figure 12 demonstrates that adding tension during the bending work can provide a net product
yield condition with the shape correction possibilities required, without overworking the material.
By adding tensile stress to the bending stresses, the zone in plastic tension at the top of the strip is
enlarged, while the zone in plastic compression at the bottom is reduced. This effectively ‘pulls’
the neutral axis down tighter to the leveling roll. As the material goes over the top and bottom
rolls, thus alternating the tension zone through the cross section, we find that this enhanced tension
zone plasticizes a larger net percentage of the strip. The net effect is that 90% of the material can
be plasticized with the maximum of only 5.5 yield strains on the material, as opposed to 10 yield
strains necessary using bending alone. This optimized method of yielding the material creates
flatter steel over a larger working range for the leveler and is crucial in high strength applications.

Non-linear time dependent finite element analysis (FEA) has been conducted to better understand
the mechanics of this combined load system, and the results have matched very well with theory.
Figures 13 & 14 show the material behaviors in the simulation. Applying tension through the
leveling machine creates the same strain pattern of 4.5-5.5 yield strains predicted, and clearly
demonstrates the neutral axis shifting towards the surface of the leveling roll. With optimal
traction between the roll and the material, these results indicate well over 90% of the cross section
has been yielded as the material progresses through the machine as shown in Figure 15. The
simulation can also have the friction characteristics altered to show the reduced performance of
the machine when processing materials with excessive oil or scale, which could prevent the leveler
from gaining the traction needed to apply full tension.

Results of Physical Testing

Case study: Strain gage tests

To accurately evaluate the strains experienced by the material in roller leveling, strain gages were
connected to sheets before processing them through an eDrive® leveler per Figure 16. The

4
measured length differential between the top and bottom of the sheet was used to evaluate the
performance of the leveler using both traditional drive methods, and the differential torque method
(eDrive® technology), with representative results in Figure 17. These results correlated well with
the theoretical expectations. Additional tension from the differential torque caused the outer fibers
to elongate by a larger amount than the material run through a traditional roller leveler, using the
same leveler plunge settings. Permanent material elongation was also measured after the steel left
the leveler when the eDrive® method was used, while the traditionally run material had no
permanent elongation. These results are virtually identical with the FEA predictions in Figure 18
and are significant. Material that achieved permanent elongation, even as low as 0.1-0.2%,
consistently maintained flatness in secondary operations indicating material which has equalized
stress.

Case study: High yield applications

Many applications require the capability to run higher strength materials than ever before. The
armor plating industry is a prime example of this trend, and successful deployment of the eDrive®
in this industry demonstrates the paradigm shifting impact of additional tension on roller leveling.
Figure 19 shows a conventional leveler capacity chart. The capacity can be greatly improved by
using larger bearings and actuators, more robust drive trains, and generally improving the
mechanical strength of the leveler. This still leaves a very small window at the top of the yield
strength range in which the leveler maintains high effectiveness, unless tension is added. Figure
20 shows a leveler with both mechanical improvements and the eDrive® system; utilizing 1,326
metric tons of hydraulic force and 150 kW of motor power to level armor plating up to 9.5mm
thick.

These plates, with yield strength over 1500 MPa, exhibited multiple initial defects including cross
bow, long bow, and edge wave. The leveler achieved excellent flatness in all conditions and saved
the customer extensive amounts of time and scrap in secondary cutting and welding operations.
This material was outside the range of a conventional leveler, but the additional work
accomplished on the material with tension in the leveler vastly increased the working range. The
fact that this extra work is done with pure tension through the drive train is crucial for high yield
materials, because it prevents the leveler from having to excessively plunge into the material.
Excessive plunge would result in damaging loads on the leveler’s backup bearings and alter the
properties of this high-performance material along with tensile breaks at the edges. eDrive®
increases the range of materials that can be run, reduces the load on the machine, and ultimately
makes possible leveling applications that would be impossible in traditional machines.

Discussion
Emerging technologies

In addition to requiring levelers with more range and capability, today’s coil processing line must
also be smarter than ever before. Figure 21 shows a Flat Trak® CL system (U.S. Patent No.

5
7,185,519, 7,461,529, 8,375,754, 8,997,539) used to measure the flatness of material exiting a
leveler, per ASTM A568. This type of inspection allows operators to gain high precision, real
time feedback regarding the product quality and the effectiveness of the leveler settings they’ve
selected. Batch identification tags can also include key metrics regarding the material flatness, to
ensure customer specifications are met. In addition, this feedback can automatically adjust the
entry and exit gap settings of the leveler to correct for shape deviations. Other leveler feedback
developments including the Bow Scout® (U.S. Patent No. 9,021,844) which can be used to
automatically adjust the leveler for long bow, and Auto Yield FindTM (U.S. Patent No. 9,815,099)
which can be used to automatically find the material’s yield strength so the entry plunge can be
properly set.

Systems approach – Industry 4.0

Newly developed automation technologies, and the accelerating pace of IoT, make modern
levelers fundamentally different than traditional technologies. The cross-functional benefits of
inspection and automation tools allow an operator with minimal training to achieve exceptional
product quality. Much of the operator knowledge that is necessary to run conventional cut-to-
length equipment can now be programmed, executed, and inspected automatically. Preventative
maintenance schedules, machine learning, and communication between pieces of equipment all
cooperatively increase the effective production value of today’s equipment far beyond
conventional methods.

Summary
Coil defects are incredibly diverse and can require a very large amount of work to be done to the
material to achieve correction. Roller leveling has been effective for generations, but new
standards for both flatness and material strengths require an improved approach. A multi-drive
system which can apply extra tension in the leveling process offers excellent, cost efficient
opportunities to increase the working range, product quality, and efficiency of roller leveling so
that coil processing capabilities can rise to meet new demands. With the addition of new feedback
and control technologies, modern leveling equipment can achieve product quality and production
value like never before.

Figures

Figure 1 – Edge wave going into the leveler, and flat steel exiting the leveler
6
 Figure 2 – Common coil defects {1}

Figure 3 – Internal stresses causing warpage in finished parts {2}

Figure 4 – Flat torched products from stress neutralized material

7
Figure 5 – Typical stress/strain relationship for steel

Figure 6 – Typical yield strain scaling behavior {2}

8
 YIELD STRAINS VS PERCENT PLASTIC
10

YIELD STRAINS
8
6
4
2
0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
PERCENT PLASTIC

Figure 7 – Yield strain growth relative to material plastic percentage

Figure 8 – Stress/strain diagram of various typical automotive steels {3}

9
 Figure 9 – Differential element of material, neutral state

Figure 10 - Differential element of material, 80% yielded through bending

Figure 11 - Differential element of material, 90% yielded through bending

10
Figure 12 - Differential element of material, 90% yielded through combined bending/tension

Figure 13 – FEA strain results of roller leveling with additional tension

Figure 14 – FEA plasticity results of roller leveling with additional tension

11
Figure 15 – FEA plasticity results alternating throughout roller leveling with additional tension

Figure 16 – Strain gage experimental setup on a steel plate prior to the leveler

12
 Figure 17 – Typical strain gage results from roller leveling process

Figure 18 – FEA results of material elongation from roller leveling with additional tension

13
Figure 19 – Typical roller leveling capacity chart, with limiting factors {4}

Figure 20 – Typical high capacity eDrive® leveler

14
 Figure 21 – Typical Flat Trak® system with HMI readout overlay

Citations
{1} Jost, Jurgen. “Leveling Beyond the Coil.” Stamping Journal July/August 2013

{2} Hazen, Tom. “The Basic Theory of Leveling.” FMA 2015 Coil Processing
Workshop, 27 April 2015, Cleveland, OH.

{3} Keeler, Stuart & Kimchi, Menachem. “Advanced High-Strength Steels Application
Guidelines Version 5.0.” May 2014

{4} WANG, Yong-qin, LIU, Zhi-fang, & YAN, Zing-Chun. “Evaluation of

Straightening Capacity of Plate Roll Straightener.” Central South University Press
2012

15