High-strength steel is widely applied due to its excellent mechanical properties. However, its high strength in turn brings great difficulties to production and processing such as hot strip rolling owing to the high rolling force, which results in large elastic deformation of roll stack and poses a huge challenge to the control of strip crown and flatness. In this paper, A three-dimensional (3D) elastic-plastic coupled thermo-mechanical finite element (FE) model for hot strip rolling of high-strength steel is developed and then verified experimentally. This model not only calculates the elastic deformation of rolls and plastic deformation of strip simultaneously, but also considers the effect of temperature variation during hot strip rolling. Based on this valid model, the effects of bending force and shifting value of work roll (WR), back-up roll (BR) size, entrance strip crown and rolling force on strip crown have been investigated quantitatively. The results obtained provide valuable guidelines for industrial strip production.
