Proceedings of STLE/ASME International Joint Tribology Conference IJTC2007 October 22-24, 2007, San Diego, California USA IJTC2007-44447 Effect of Lubricant Scarcity on the Film Formation in an Inlet Zone during High Speed Cold Rolling Process Abstract Effective lubrication during the cold rolling is vital in achieving desirable tolerance and surface quality over the metallic sheets. However, in the process of cold rolling, it has been established that the lubricant’s viscosity drastically reduces (viscosity thinning) due to huge viscous heat dissipation in the lubricating film at the elevated rolling speeds. Thinning of lubricant viscosity increases the escaping tendency of the lubricant during its entraining in the inlet zone. Thus, scarcity (starvation) of lubricant prevails in the inlet zone of roll and strip interface. Based on the present investigation, it is observed that the existence of starvation seems to be beneficial in terms of reduced temperature rise and less quantity of lubricating oil required provided there is a continuous film at the strip-roll interface. Introduction Cold rolling of flat metallic sheets is most important metal forming process that produces desirable tolerance and surface quality over the sheets. Many research works have been reported related to isothermal cold rolling process. However, very limited published works can be seen dealing with the thermal effects in cold rolling lubrication. Moreover, authors could not find any paper dealing with starvation and thermal effects on cold rolling of strips. Few researchers [1-2] have carried out starvation studies by considering thermal effects in the lubricated line contacts by incorporating either hydrodynamic or elastohydrodynamic lubrication concepts. It has been observed based on the literature [3] that the pressure developed in the inlet zone shifts towards the entrance of work zone in the presence of starvation. This affects film formation in contact zone. Nomenclatures C p specific heat, J/kg-K h film thickness, m k thermal conductivity of lubricant , Wm -1 K -1 m  lineal mass flux, kg/m-sec p pressure, N/m 2 P k Legendre polynomial T film temperature, K T r temperature of roll surface, K T s temperature of strip surface, K Prahlad Singh Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Tech. and Management, Gurgaon. H.R, India R. K. Pandey Industrial Tribology Machine Dynamics and Maintenance Engineering Centre, IIT Delhi, India Yogendra Nath Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India