# Analysis of the Influence of Segmented Rollers on Slab Bulge Deformation  
[PERSON]  
1 School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.  
In order to consider the dynamic contact between the slab and the rollers, [PERSON] et al. suggested a 3D thermomechanical coupling model based on this dynamic contact between the slab and the rollers to compare with the 2D bulge deformation model to calculate bulge deformation [14]. Thus, [PERSON] et al. proposed a 3D finite element viscoelastic creep model to study slab bulge deformation and the influence of temperature field distribution on this deformation [15]. However, this model neglected the slab bulge deformation on the narrow side. The slab bulge deformation on the wide side and that on the narrow side are actually mutually influential, and bulge deformation on the wide and narrow sides has been observed by some scholars [16; 17; 18]. Thus, 3D thermomechanical coupling models that included the dynamic contacts between the slab and the rollers were established to study the slab bulge deformation of the narrow side [19; 20]. The 3D finite element models mentioned above mainly focused on the deformation mechanism of bulge deformation and the influence of process and structural parameters on this deformation. However, control measures of bulge deformation were hardly used in these models.  
[PERSON] et al. built a three-dimensional thermomechanical coupling model to study the temperature and bulge deformation distributions of a slab during the casting process, and the bulge deformation of this model was compared with that of the 2D bulging model [13; 18]. The simulation results in the 3D bulging models were further compared with measured data from the actual production process to explore the accuracy of the simulation results in the three-dimensional bulge deformation models [17; 20]. This comparison made it possible to use the finite element method to explore a method for controlling slab bulge deformation, and the fixed-gap and variable-diameter methods were suggested to reduce bulge deformation [21; 22; 23; 24].  
In the above-mentioned models, all casting rollers were assumed to be rigid, in order to save computing time, and the influence of casting roller deformation on slab bulge deformation was neglected. In fact, these casting rollers also deform during continuous casting. Therefore, this simplification would lead to an inaccurate reduction of bulge deformation values for a continuous casting slab. Moreover, segmented rollers have been widely adopted in the actual production process to control for slab bulge deformation [25; 26; 27]. The reason for this is that the stiffness of segmented rollers is much greater than that of solid rollers [28; 29]. However, the structural parameters of segmented rollers have not been systematically studied for controlling slab bulge deformation.  
This paper aims to discover the influence of segmented rollers on reducing slab bulge deformation and investigate the relationship between the stiffness of the segmented rollers and slab bulge deformation. A 3D thermomechanical coupling model based on the dynamic contact between the slab and the elastic casting rollers was suggested, and the structural parameters of the segmented rollers are investigated for controlling bulge deformation.