Abstract
Skew rolling (SR) is a special metal-forming technique for producing spherical components. In order to analyze the forming mechanism for bearing steel balls (BSBs), an FE simulation of warm SR was conducted using commercial FEM software (Deform-3D) to predict the distribution of plastic strain, strain rate. temperature and stress for BSBs with a diameter of phi 30 mm. A warm-SR experiment was performed to validate the FE simulation. In this work, SR process parameters were designed to form BSBs with a diameter of phi 30 mm. The experimental results show that warm SR allows the production of spherical BSBs with a high manufacturing quality. Comparing the experimental and predicted results, we found that the predicted BSBs were consistent with the experimental BSBs. Based on the experimental investigation and numerical simulation, the BSB formation mechanism during the warm-SR process was revealed.