A NEW PROCEDURE BASED ON AN EXPERT SYSTEM SOFTWARE FOR ROLL PASS DESIGN IN SQUARE AND ROUND REBAR ROLLING

Abstract The present investigation illustrates a new approach for the design and the optimization of rod rolling sequences for the production of concrete steel rebars. An expert system, capable to define grooves shapes and geometries, the billet elongation, the rolls separation force and the power absorbed at each pass (not shown in this paper), has been developed. In order to make the research of the optimal path more efficient, an objective function has been employed. The program has been designed in such a way to allow the user to set several process parameters (as well as the initial and final geometries) such as: rolls radius, friction coefficient between rolls and billet and initial temperature of the billet. Moreover, the core algorithm has been put into operation using an object oriented language Java 1.5 in order to obtain a modular and extensible system. This way has permitted to easily add further passes, or even new groove shapes to those already built-in the main program. Successively, two sequences currently used in industrial processes have been compared with those ones designed by the expert system to demonstrate its consistency and effectiveness