Shape rolling is widely used in producing uniform cross sectional parts of structural and mechanical elements. However, roll pass design for shape rolling is very complex and laborious, depending on state of the art that involves non-linear plasticity.
In this study, an expert system for roll pass schedule and roll profile design of square-to-round and square-to-square bar rolling is developed in C++ language on 486 PC. A backward inference scheme was used to determine the intermediate roll pass type and elongation coefficient for each pass. The automatic pass generation algorithm and basic empirical rules for determination of the elongation coefficients available in the literature were selected and applied to automatically obtain the desired sequence design.
The overall system is composed of a supporting system for input and pass display, knowledge-based system for process sequence design, and graphical resources for menu system and frame. The intermediate pass types and number of passes can be automatically determined and all cases considered can be obtained in the result data. Various modules of the system are reviewed by applying the developed algorithm for the selected examples of product- and process-designs in order to demonstrate their capabilities. It was found out that the developed system can be successfully used for the automatic sequence design of shape rolling of round and square bars considered in the present investigation.
