Journal articles on the topic 'Rolling piercing'

The article analyzes the piercing and rolling process of seamless pipes on PRP 70-270 of JSC “VMP” in terms of power parameters, piercing time and geometric sizes of pipes. The research results were compared with the results of computer simulation on software package QFORM 3D. For simulation, the deformation zones were designed for piercing a mold tube with dimensions of 203×16.5 mm in one pass on a mandrel with diameter of 162 mm and in two passes of piercing and rolling-off on mandrels with diameter of 76 and 162 mm, respectively. From the obtained data on the power parameters, it was found that from the point of view of energy consumption, piercing in one pass seems more appropriate. However, when piercing in one pass, wear resistance of the mandrels sharply decreases, since the contact time between the tool and the hot metal increases. This leads to a decrease in quality of the pipes’ inner surface, more frequent replacement of the tool and increased downtime of the equipment. During simulation, the selected parameter of the friction factor has a significant impact on the value of power parameters (torque and power consumption) and piercing time. The dependences of changing power parameters and piercing time on the friction factor during piercing in a two-roll mill with guards are obtained. With increase of the friction factor, piercing time decreases and torque and rolling power increase. The simulation results are correlated with results of experimental rolling. With a correctly chosen value of the friction factor, power parameters and geometry of the mold tube can be quite accurately predicted by computer modeling.

The paper presents the results of the vibrodiagnostics of a centering machine mechanism for holding piercing mill mandrel N1 of the pipe-rolling plant (PRP) 350. In the paper, it is established that vibration acceleration of a bearing roller lever of the centering machine mechanism for holding piercing mill mandrel during milling of an Æ282х50 mm shell, steel 20 reaches 5…12 m/s2, and of the upper roller’s vibration frequency is 33.3 Hz. The paper presents the results of the thickness measuring of the Æ282х50 shell, steel 20 after using the piercing mill N1 350. The results shows the distinctive influence of the dynamics of the milling holding mechanism rod. The system is put forth for calculating the energy-power parameters during the realization of the technical process for making shells of the required specifications in a piercing mill. The paper establishes the value of the milling axial resistance to the flow of the milled metal (taking the calibration values into account). The paper presents a refined system for making a dynamic model for the piercing bill milling holding mechanism rod with the milling calibration parameters taken fully included. A differential equation for the milling rod movement is made, specifically for the dynamic model of the PRP piercing mill mechanical system. The dynamic values of the mechanical system are refined, which is used as a starting point for solving the tasks dealing with the analysis of the PRP piercing mill milling rod’s vibroactivity state. In order to decrease rod vibroactivity levels, the paper recommends choosing rational milling calibration and to set the shell milling modes using mechanical system dynamics modelling during the corresponding stages of the design of technological processes. The paper pro-poses a scheme for modernization of the PRP 350 piercing bill exit side by switching the centering machine rod system holding bridges gear to proportional hydraulics. Keywords: piercing mill, vibration diagnostics, thickness measurement, piercing, sleeve; difference in wall thickness, energy-power parameters, calibration, mandrel, vibroactivity, dynamics, mandrel retention mechanism.

The article proposes a process for obtaining semi-finished products in the form of pipes made of copper alloys for electrical applications using the screw rolling method. The paper presents the results of experimental piercing and rolling of pipe samples made of Cu–0.75Cr copper alloy billets with a diameter of 45 mm. The 43.5×10.0 mm samples obtained after piercing using a two-roll screw rolling mill had exact geometrical dimensions: outer diameter deviation at the front end was up to 1 %, at the back end – up to 2.4 %; relative variation in wall thickness at the front end was 0.3÷0.5 %, at the rear end – 0.5÷1.0 %. Then pierced pipe samples were rolled using a three-roll radial-shear rolling (RSR) mini mill with a different total degree of reduction – samples were obtained with an outer diameter of 30, 25 and 18 mm. The reduction process was analyzed from the point of view of internal hole stability and deformation. In case of 30 % relative reduction of the outer diameter, rolling without a mandrel is accompanied by wall thickening. In this case, inner diameter deviations are within acceptable limits. The experiments on obtaining samples from the Cu–0.75Cr alloy by screw piercing and reduction in the RSR mill show that this scheme can be implemented in principle in industry. At the same time it is necessary to define more exactly deformation parameters (degree of deformation, choice of reduction scheme) to obtain a quality product. Various options for heat treatment (HT) of the obtained pipe samples and the effect of the HT method on electrical conductivity and hardness are considered. Samples after piercing had a conductivity of 59.3 % IACS. The maximum electrical conductivity of 76.7 % IACS was obtained on samples after quenching from a temperature of 1020 °C and aging at 450 °C for 3 h. The results of the work show the fundamental possibility of obtaining semi-finished products from copper alloys for electrical purposes using the screw rolling method.

Typical seamless tube production processes are an extrusion and a rotary tube piercing. The rotary piercing process is more competitive than the extrusion process from the viewpoint of flexibility. Main components of this equipment are twin rolling mills and a plug. Twin rolling mills are installed on a skew with proper angles in two directions. These angles are called the cross angle and the feed angle. The internal crack initiation and the growth at central area of the billet are gradually progressed due to the Mannesmann effects. The feed angle affects on the position of the crack initiation in the rotary tube piercing process. Adjustable design parameters in the equipment are the feed angle and the plug insertion depth. In this research, the rotary tube piercing equipment was developed. Finite element analyses with the plug and without the plug were carried out in order to predict the internal crack initiation position under good calculation efficiency. Ductile fracture models with the one variable equation were utilized to crack initiation criteria. The forward distance of the plug was determined to be 5 mm through the analysis. It was testified by experiments of a carbon steel billet.

In the forging industry, rolling is used to produce ring forgings, which are widely used in power and nuclear engineering. According to the technical conditions and established practice, large ring forgings are made using the operations of precipitation, piercing and rolling out with a striker on the mandrel.

The increase in operational durability of the technological tools of the piercing mill in the pipe-rolling shop and decrease in deficiency of produced pipes due to improvement of calibration of cone-shaped rolls is considered in the article. Increase in durability the piercing mandrels is evaluated as 1,3–4,3 times when using calibration of cone-shaped rolls with a smaller corner of an output cone. Improvement of quality of external surface of produced pipes was made due to application of experimental ring calibration of rolls. It is shown that this calibration demands big expenses of energy at the piercing.

Purpose. Conducting research aimed at choosing the rational modes of flashing the tubular billet by stabilizing the dynamic characteristics of the drive power line of heavy-duty piercing mills TPA. Methodology. The dynamics of the power line of the piercing mill of the pipe-rolling unit (TPA) are considered, taking into account the peculiarities of the behavior of the spindle hinges and the mechanism for setting the work rolls. Findings. The differential equation of motion of the line of the main drive of the piercing mill is composed and its numerical solution is given. An adapted three-mass dynamic model of the system is considered and a solution is obtained using the software Solid Works IT Simulation X. The basic conditions for the occurrence of unstable dynamic phenomena in the fieldline and the installation mechanism of the piercing mill rolls are formulated. It is shown that the unstable dynamics of the system are one of the main reasons for the discrepancy between the results of well-known theoretical, experimental studies and pipe thickness measurement at TPA 350 piercing mills. Originality. The main causes of the emergence of parametric oscillations in the drive of the working stand of the piercing mill, the installation mechanism of the work rolls in connection with the mechanism of formation of the thin-wall thickness of pipes are established. The areas of stability of the system’s functioning are determined depending on the operating modes and the angle of feed of the work rolls, taking into account the spatial position of the elements of the spindle device. The necessary and sufficient stability conditions for the joint stable functioning of the power line elements of the piercing mill are formed. Practical value. To stabilize the processes for flashing the tubular billet, a scheme has been proposed for upgrading the spindles of the main drive and the mechanism for installing the work rolls of the piercing mill No. 1 of TPA 350. The results are applicable to similar helical rolling mills. Keywords: firmware, billet, mill, pipe, uneven stroke, varying thickness, dynamics, drive, roll, oscillations, spindle, Cardan, hinge, moment of inertia, rigidity, drum, installation mechanism, stability.

During piercing rolling simulation, extreme mesh deformation cannot be solved by the finite element method (FEM). Re-meshing is necessary to prevent the effect of severe mesh distortion. However, the element-free method can solve this problem because the continuous body is discretized with a set of nodes, not meshes. In this paper, three-dimension rigid-plastic element-free Galerkin Method (EFG) is introduced to analyze the piercing rolling process. The approximation functions are calculated considering a moving least squares (MLS) approach. The Newton-Raphson method is used for the solution of the nonlinear system of equations. The equivalent stress, the equivalent plastic strain and the equivalent plastic strain rate obtained by EFG and rigid-plastic FEM are analyzed and compared. The simulation results of the EFG method are in agreement with those obtained by using the rigid-plastic FEM and the effectiveness of the model is verified.

The Fomichev plug is of characteristic producing equal unit-reduction of wall thickness along its perforation section during seamless tube piercing. This paper introduces the design of a novel Fomichev plug based upon the analysis of roll opening, taking into account for both feed angle and toe angle of a cone type piercer, then presents a 3-D coupled thermo-mechanical simulation of the novel Fomichev Plug’s performance characteristic during cone-roll piercing process, with the aid of FE code MSC.SuperForm. In comparison with conventional plugs, as FEM simulation result shows that the new plug makes the metal deformation distribute uniformly along its perforation section, which brings about well-distributed plug wear. The novel Fomichev plug is able to decrease the slip between the roll and workpiece and avoid rolling block owing to its smaller plug force, which can increase piercing efficiency so, moreover, analyzing stress distribution, it’s more suitable for metal deformation with fewer defects in tube piercing, makes resistance to metal elongation smaller, reduces wedge cleaving to tube billet, and prevents lamination defects during piercing high-alloy billet.

Wall thickness is measured by a micrometer on shells after piercing, hollows after rolling and tubes after stretch reducing in an Assel production line for seamless steel tubes. The characteristics of wall thickness eccentricity are exhibited, and the heredity and origin of wall thickness eccentricity are analyzed. Finally, the factors influencing wall thickness eccentricity are discussed. The results show that: (1) Wall thickness eccentricity originates from temperature eccentricity in cross section of round billets, comes into being on shells in piercing process, and is passed down to hollows and finally to tubes; (2) Bigger feed angle of piercing, smaller plug diameter and less stability of plug bar will increase wall thickness eccentricity, while complying to the influence of temperature eccentricity on round billets.

Seamless pipes are produced using piercing rolling process in which round bars are fed between two rolls and pierced by stationary plug. During this process, the material undergoes severe deformation which renders it impractical to perform the numerical simulations with conventional finite element methods. In this paper, three dimensional numerical simulations of the piercing process are performed with Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) Method using Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) Formulation with LS DYNA software. The results of numerical simulations agree with experimental data of Plasticine workpiece and the validity of the analysis method is confirmed.

Mastering of offshore deposits of hydrocarbons require application of new types of pipe products, capable to effectively work under conditions of constant impact of aggressive media. In this connection new tasks arose to produce seamless hot-deformed pipes made of martensitic class stainless steels with increase chrome content. Mastering of such pipes production is connected with necessity to overcome a series of technological problems. The problems are stipulated by metal structure peculiarities, appeared in low plasticity and narrow temperature range for hot deformation, increased inclination to defects formation in the rolling process, as well as more intensive wear of rolling instrument, in particular of that of piercing mill. Main stages of seamless pipes production mastering, made of type 13Cr steel grades at TPA 159–426 line with TPZ-3 continuous mill of JSC “Volzhsky Pipe Plant” presented. The complex of measures for the noted problems overcoming, including semi-product type selection, piercing mill rolling instrument calibration change, as well as deformation regimes and other measures presented. The elaborated complex of measures allowed providing of pipes manufacturing of necessary quality for PAO “Gasprom” demand as per TU 14-3Р-129–2015 specifications.

This paper deals with numerical modeling of the piercing process of a thick-walled tube in two rolls skew rolling mill, equipped with Diescher’s guiding discs. After a short description of the problem the numerical model of the process is described. The sensitivity of the simulation results to numerical methods and physical parameters is discussed. The simulated results visualize dynamic evolution of force in the piercing process. The stability of the process and force condition is analyzed by FEM simulation. The model is verified by comparing the values of calculated force parameters and those measured in laboratory conditions. Finally, the future plans are presented.

The experience of the Electrostal Heavy Machinery Plant (EZTM) in designing and production of special gearboxes and gear stands for main drive of various rolling mills is summed up. The specifics of section and ball-rolling mills, piercing and reduction mills, mills for cold rolling of tubes and mills for the production of reinforcing bars are considered. It was shown that at designing of special gearboxes for the main drives of rolling mills, the designer, taking into account the parameters of the mill, must build a cyclogram of their loading, which depends both on the range of rolled products and on the variability of loads within the rolling cycle of one billet. In the Designing Department of EZTM, the strength calculation of gears of different types is carried out in the REDUK 4.3 software package, which allows performing strength calculations of gears taking into account the expected loading cyclogram. At the same time, the program provides the initial data for calculating the shafts and bearings, i.e, the forces in engagement and the rotational speed of each of the shafts for the first stage of the cyclogram. The geometrical parameters of the gears are optimized according to the criterion of contact and flexural strength, both between the stages and within each of them.The load sequence diagram depends both on the range of rolled products, and variable loadings in a rolling cycle of a workpiece. Geometric parameters of gears are optimized by contact and bending equal strength, as between the stages as within each of them. Carburizing, hardening and grinding of teeth are provided and secured technologically. Currently, the gearboxes manufactured by the plant are successfully operated at many metallurgical enterprises, both in Russia and abroad. Among them, the gearboxes of main drive of the piercing mill of the Seversk Pipe Plant, the mills for cold rolling of tubes in the USA and China, the section mills at the Yartsevo Casting and Rolling Plant, the reduction mill at the Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Plant, etc.

Stainless steels of austenite class 08–12Х18Н10Т have a high corrosion resistance, which stipulates for their wide application in various areas of industry. Technology of pipes production of the steels is rather specific and requires observation of some conditions. It was shown that temperature of a work-piece heating before deformation is an important parameter of the technology. It was noted that for the piercing of a steel work-piece with various chrome content, there is a rational temperature interval. Nonobservation of the temperature can lead to defects formation on internal pipe surface because of earlier destruction and opening of metal cavity during piercing. The choice of the rolling-out scheme has a direct effect on the work-piece forming in cross-sections. Results of hot rolling of Ø37×2,5 tube samples, manufactured of 08–12Х18Н10Т steel and carbon steel of grade 40 presented. The rolling was done at a laboratory mill. As a result of the experiment the lower limit of ovality of rolls grooves was specified for conditions of rolling of pipes from 08–12Х18Н10Т steels by 2-roll scheme. At the rolling with ovality B/H ≤1,07, defects appeared on the internal tube surface in the form of scratches caused by the mandrel. The rational range of ovality of grooves at multi-stand rolling can be from 1.08 to 1.15. According to criterion of groove overfilling by metal for steels 08–12Х18Н10Т, requirements were formed towards the groove width of the first stand of longitudinal rolling mill. The groove width must be larger than the sleeve diameter: for 3-roll scheme – at least by 2–3%, for 2-roll scheme – at least by 7.0–7.5%. Potential advantages of 3-roll scheme comparing with 2-roll scheme for rolling of 08–12Х18Н10Т steels were established as follows: lower probability of grooves overfilling by metal of the work-piece, absence of defects (scratches caused by mandrel), on the tube internal surface at minimal ovality level of 1.07, lower level of transverse pipe wall non-uniform thickness.

The novel Fomichev plug described in this paper is of characteristic producing equal unit-reduction of wall thickness along its perforation section during seamless tube piercing, which designed on the base of the roll opening of Julong piercer, taking into account for both feed angle and toe angle of a cone type piercer. Then a 3-D thermal-mechanical coupled numerical simulation on performance characteristic of novel Fomichev plug is presented with the aid of commercial FE code MSC.SuperForm, according to practical process parameters of piercing and rolling for steel grade P91 on Julong piercer in Yangzhou Chengde Steel Pipe Co., Ltd. By comparison with conventional plugs, as FE simulation result shows that the new plug reduces the damage value of the workpiece, thus decreases the tendency of lamination defects. What’s more, the axial resistance of novel Fomichev plug is smaller than the conventional, which is in favor of biting condition and increases piercing efficiency. Furthermore, the newly-designed plug’s temperature field is more uniform, which can alleviate failure of piercing plug caused by overtop local temperature, prolong its working life, and improve the quality of hollow shells.

A new method of hot-rolled pipes rolling on the automatic tandem mill is suggested. It consists of two rolling stands. This method allows achieving the rough pipe preovalisation before reaching the automatic mill. The rough pipe preovalisation provides even groove filling and the decrease of pipe wall thickness variation. The rough pipe preovalisation will allow increasing the elongation ratio from 1.5 to 2.0 on the lengthwise rolling stand no. 1 and decreasing the elongation ratio on the piercing mill, therefore the chance of rolling skin formation on the external surface of the pipe is decreased. The way to reduce the probability of the formation of a guide mark defect due to the kinematic tension during rolling on a stub mandrel with rough tube preovalisation is investigated. The influence of the kinematic tension factor on the pipe forming in the groove taper at a lengthwise rolling with rough tube preovalisation is explored.

Using the laboratory rolling mill with smooth rolls, piercing, as well as rolling in a pilger mill of the seamless tubes with diameter 273 mm from the HSLA steel microalloyed with vanadium steel was simulated. Influence of the wall thickness (6.3 – 40 mm) and finish rolling temperature on the final structural and mechanical properties was investigated. Necessary temperatures of the phase transformations in the course of cooling were determined by dilatometric tests. Based on the dilatometry results, finish rolling temperatures were reduced. Lower rolling temperatures yielded in a relative grain refinement. Effect of the finish rolling temperature did not have any marked impact on the tensile tests results. Strength properties decreased only slightly with the increasing wall thickness and the plastic properties were not influenced significantly by this parameter. The positive effect of the reduced finishing temperature appeared markedly in the results of impact tests performed at room temperature only. Notch toughness was increased by approx. 25 % in the case of the wall thickness of not less than 20 mm.

Abstract The pest status of insects in agricultural settings is human-defined based on behaviors that may negatively impact the yield of susceptible crops. As such, both the insect behavior and the affected crop play a part in determining pest status. One helpful means of understanding pest status involves using pest injury guilds, which distinguish different pest groups based on similar kinds of injury to comparable plant tissues. Pest injury guilds defined in the literature are reviewed and then applied to agriculturally significant Lepidoptera. More specialized Lepidoptera behaviors which are economically relevant, such as leaf-rolling or stem-boring, are examined within their respective injury guilds. In this review, fruit-piercing moths are discussed within the context of pest Lepidoptera behaviors and are highlighted due to their unique means of causing economic damage. Unlike other Lepidoptera in agricultural settings, fruit-piercing moths are harmful as adults rather than larvae, and directly injure fruits using a specially adapted proboscis. The ecology and systematics of fruit-piercing moths, as well as current control options, are also discussed.

Using Oyane ductile fracture criterion, a 2-D coupled thermo-mechanical simulation of center crack occurrence in round billet during 2-roll rotary rolling process is presented with the aid of FE code MSC.Superform. Based on an existing flat-die-model, an improved FE model is advanced, in which not only the influence of roll feed angle and entry cone angle but also the diameter of the piercing roll on the process are taken into account. By adopting the parameters of the Diescher piercer in 140mm Mandrel Mill of Bao Steel in China, the distribution and development of strain/stress in tube rounds are analyzed, and the eigenvalue of ductile fracture as well. The critical percentage of diameter reduction is obtained from the simulation. The result shows a good agreement with the experimental value, and therefore is of widely guiding significance to practical process for rationally formulating deformation parameters of steel tube piercing.

By use of physical simulations, it was studied the influence of finish rolling temperature (from 820 °C to 970 °C) on the microstructural and mechanical properties of seamless tubes with a different wall thickness (from 6.3 to 40 mm) – in the state after rolling as well as after quenching and tempering. In laboratory conditions, by use of the Simulator HDS-20, the bloom piercing and rolling of the seamless tubes from 25CrMo4 low-alloy steel in a pilger mill were in a simplified way simulated. The wall thickness of the tube influenced the total deformation of specimens at anisothermal multi-pass plain-strain compression tests as well as the final cooling rate. The quenching and tempering of the deformed specimens was subsequently performed with use of the electric resistance furnaces. The finish rolling temperature had only insignificant effect on the resulting properties. Markedly lower hardness was obtained only after the simulation of tube production with the wall thickness of 40 mm contrary to the wall thickness of 6.3 and 20 mm. Structural variations of the specimens after rolling simulations were more or less overlapped by the subsequent quenching from the temperature of 850 °C and tempering at the temperature of 680 °C.

In continuous tube rolling process, wall thickness reduction per stand will be changed due to wall thickness fluctuation of pierced shell caused by piercing process, which results in changes in metal flow conditions and affects force parameters, deformation parameters, especially transverse wall thickness precision of rolled hollow tube. In this paper, with the aid of commercial FE code MSC.SuperForm, the high pressure boiler steel tube continuous rolling process of a typical hollow tube specification 133.0×4.0mm are simulated based on 133 main pass sequence of 89mm 6-stand semi-floating mandrel mill, and force parameters, equivalent plastic strain, transverse wall thickness precision, outline dimension and real roundness of rolled hollow tube are analyzed and compared on the condition of two different wall thicknesses of pierced shell. Analysis results indicate that force parameters increase with wall thickness of pierced shell, maximal rolling force, rolling moment and mandrel axial force increase 10% or so in the first three stands when rolling pierced shell of wall thickness 11.5mm compared to that of wall thickness 10.5mm. When rolling pierced shell of wall thickness 10.5mm, there exist front and back tensions among the third, the fourth and the fifth stands and outline dimension and real roundness of rolled hollow tube is slightly better. However, transverse wall thickness of rolled hollow tube at the bottom of groove is pulled thin obviously.

At production of pipes of type 13Cr grade steel used at development of oil and gas deposits in areas with aggressive environment, intensive wear of instrument takes place, first of all, piercing mill mandrels. Factors, influencing the resistivity of the piercing mandrels considered, including chemical composition of the material, the mandrel is made of and its design. Based on industrial experience it was shown, that chrome content in the mandrel material practically does not affect on the increase of its resistivity, since the formed thin protective oxides having high melting temperature, are quickly failed and practically are not restored in the process of piercing. To increase the resistivity of piercing mandrels at production of casing tubes of type 13Cr grade steel, a work was accomplished to select a new material for their manufacturing. The chemical composition of steel presented, which was traditionally used for piercing mandrels manufacturing, as well as a steel grade proposed to increase their resistivity. First, molybdenum content was increased, which increases the characteristics of steel strength and ductility at high temperatures and results in grain refining. Second, tungsten content was also increased, which forms carbides in the steel resulting in an increase of its hardness and “red resistivity”, as well as in preventing grains growth during heating. Third, cobalt content was also increased, which increases heat resistivity and shock loads resistivity. The three elements increase enabled to increase the mandrels resistivity by two times. Results of mandrel test of steel 20ХН2МВ3КБ presented, the mandrel having corrugation on the working cone surface, which enabled to reach the resistivity growth to 12 passes without significant change of instrument cost. Microstructure of mandrels made of steels 20Х2Н4МФА and 20ХН2МВ3КБ shown. Application of the centering pin of special design was tested, which provided forming of a rounding edge on the front billet ends, eliminated undercut of mandrel external surface in the process of secondary billet grip and increase the service life of the piercing mill mandrels. At production of seamless pipes of martensite class type 13Cr stainless steels having L80 group of strength, an increase of piercing mandrel resistivity was reached by more than four times, which together with other technical solutions enabled to increase the hourly productivity of the hot rolling section of Volzhsky pipe plant ТПА 159-426 line by more than two times.

In the work were set and solved the task of the FEM simulation process, the screw firmware blank on the double roller mill with mushroom-shaped rolls. The decision of the task allowed us to calculate the parameters of the contact surface of the workpiece to roll as well as the analysis of dimensional accuracy of the casings. The adequacy of the models is proved by comparison of calculated and experimental values of the parameters of the contact surface and the sizes of the casings. Implementation of the developed technical solutions for adaptation of a piercing mill in the shop No1 PJSC "STZ" has allowed to provide high stability of the rolling of thin-walled shells with size 328×433 of 20.55 mm x 26,9 mm.

When utilizing current combined systems of manufacturing large-sized shaft forgings, there is a tendency towards using an integrated approach, which consists in optimizing the shape of forged ingots and methods of their forging, intensifying shear strains in the axial zone of the ingots during their plastic deformation, and eliminating asymmetry of external forces at various points along the cross section of the ingot being deformed. This paper presents the results of the comparative analysis of quality of shaft forgings when forging ingots with a three-beam symmetric and asymmetric cross-section, as well as with the traditional octahedral cross-section, are used for the manufacture of shaft forgings. It has been shown that the use of forging ingots with a three-beam symmetrical and asymmetrical cross section provided an increase of KCU by an average of 4.3% and 13.1%, and of density by 17.5% and 21.0%, respectively, in the absence and presence of inert gas (argon) blowdown of the melt in the casting ladle before casting it into ingot molds. Their use also contributes to an increase in the number of forgings, suitable for ultrasonic testing, according to the C/c class with a permissible equivalent discontinuity diameter of ≤ 3 mm.

AA5xxx series Al-Mg alloys possess good combination of high specific strength-to-weight ratio, formability and corrosion resistance, which makes them attractive to the automakers for their light weighting needs. Increasingly the automakers are demanding sustainable materials. Developing aluminum alloys with increased recycled content is becoming imperative. However, increasing the recycled content can negatively impact the overall formability and joinability of the alloy. Formability is important in the shaping of complex parts and it is a key requirement in automotive manufacturing. Similarly, the other key requirement for automotive sheet is joinability. Self-piercing riveting (SPR) technology is increasingly being used for joining. In this study, the process optimization of high recycle content AA5754 alloy’s for formability and rivetability will be discussed. Controlling the annealing heat treatment to produce optimum combination of grain size along with balanced recrystallized and rolling texture to improve the SPR joint configuration will be presented.

Purpose. Based on the analysis of the current state of production of pipes at the Pilger plant 5-12, PJSC Interpipe NTZ proposed new technological solutions for its modernization to expand the size and brand range of pipes produced, reduce metal consumption by improving the accuracy of pipes, ensuring energy savings by reducing natural gas and others Methodology. Selection of representative data of pipe production processes on Pilger installations operated in Ukraine and abroad from scientific and patent sources. Solving problems on the choice of optimal resource and energy-saving technological schemes for the production of pipes at TPA 5-12ʺ PJSC Interpipe NTZ at the expense of new technological schemes and equipment modernization. Findings. The article presents the results of the analysis of the state of production of pipes for injection molding machines with pilgrim mills in the modern conditions of globalization of the world economy, which requires the modernization and reconstruction of these injection molding machines to ensure competitiveness on the world market. New technological and technical solutions for the modernization of TPA 5-12, PJSC Interpipe NTZ, have been developed to expand the range and increase the diameter of the pipes to 465 mm or more from carbon, alloyed and hard-to-deform steel grades. Originality. Expanded ideas about the formation of a thin-wall with the firmware NLZ in the glass on a horizontal hydraulic press 20MN and when rolling the glass on the mill-elongator. The mechanism of formation and correction of the different wall thickness in the system of the piercing press – mill-elongator is specified and the ways of reducing the wall thickness of the sleeves and pipes are outlined. Practical value. The new technological and technical solutions developed in the article can be used for the modernization and reconstruction of Pilger plants, including TPA 5-12ʺ PJSC Interpipe NTZ, which will increase their competitiveness by expanding the size and grade of pipes, reduce metal consumption, by increasing the accuracy and reducing waste, and also provide energy savings by reducing the consumption of natural gas for heating the roll for some pipe mix. Keywords: pipe, liner, piercing press, millelongator, pilgrim installation, varnished, energy-saving, modernization, descaling.

For the production of various machine-building products - rolling rolls, parts of power equipment, piercing mandrels - complex alloy steels containing chromium and a significant number of other deficient alloying elements (nickel, vanadium, molybdenum) type 38Ni3CrMoV are used. The paper presents the results of research on the influence of modes of hardening and subsequent cryogenic treatment on the parameters of the structure, hardness and wear resistance of this steel. Visible changes in the microstructure of thermally improved steel samples during cryogenic treatment were not found, which can be explained by the high thermodynamic stability of the sorbitol structure and the practical absence of residual austenite due to its decomposition during high tempering. It is shown that cryogenic treatment of thermally improved 38Ni3CrMoV steel contributes to an increase in the hardness, toughness and wear resistance this steel (~3.8 %). In this case, there is a slight increase in the parameter and magnitude of microstresses of the crystal lattice, an increase in the density of dislocations due to the removal of thermal stresses. To obtain a multiphase structure of 38Ni3CrMoV steel with retained austenite, isothermal quenching from the γ - α region has been proposed. The use of cryogenic treatment for the experimental mode of hardening of 38Ni3CrMoV steel samples promotes the transformation of retained austenite in the final structure of the samples into martensite with a significant increase in the microhardness of its structural components at the 22.3 %. The experimental hardening mode + cryogenic treatment provides a significant increase in the hardness and wear resistance of 38Ni3CrMoV steel at the 21.6 % while ensuring a certain level of its impact toughness (more than 4 J/cm2) and can be recommended for the implementation of the technology of differentiated hardening of large-sized products made of 38Ni3CrMoV steel. Keywords: steel, structure, hardness, wear resistance, isothermal hardening, cryogenic treatment.

Hot-rolled pipe production is complicated process of metal treatment by pressure and as a rule it has three operations of form charging: piercing, plugging, calibration or reduction. Each of them is characterized by complex schemes of stress-deformed state which promotes either formation or detection of various defects. Hot billet piercing at screw piercing rolling mill is widely used for pipe production for its high output and getting the shells of long length. But this operation of form charging of the metal is realized under the conditions of complicated stress-deformed state with cyclic alternating bending of all metal layers. Defects appearing on the outside surface of the shell such as captures and cracks is caused by plastic bending of shell wall, which is followed by alternating stress and deformation at the inlet and outlet cone of deformation zone in consequence of four times plastic bending of the wall. Shell wall is influenced by compression stress of the working rolls and guides. The less favorable scheme of stress state with tensile stress arises on the shell surface between the rolls and the guide. And as a results it generates and increases the defects on the outside surface. Theoretical and experimental research of deformation and speed conditions of billet piercing process for screw piercing rolling mill is presented in the work. Statistic data of production mills which operate in TRA 50-200 and TRA 159-426 lines were used for the research. All the calculations were done with use of applied software and test machine of original design with crank and connecting rod mechanism was constructed. The machine carries out the process of alternating plastic bending which is in maximum close to the conditions taking place in deformation zone of screw piercing rolling mill. Definition of rational configuration of sample shape was determined. Process plasticity of the metal of hot samples was analyzed as well. The samples were made from hot-rolled bars of different steel grades.

I wake up early, questions buzzing through my mind. While I sip my morning cup of tea and read The Guardian online, the writer, restless because I’m ignoring her, walks around firing questions.“Expecting the patriarchy to want to share its enormous wealth and power with women is extremely naïve.”I nod. Outside the window pieces of sky are framed by trees, fluffy white clouds alternate with bright patches of blue. The sweet, heady first wafts of lavender and citrus drift in through the open window. Spring has come to Hvar. Time to get to work.The more I understand about narcissism, the more I understand the world. I didn’t understand before. In the 1990s.“No—you knew, but you didn’t know at the same time.”I kept telling everybody The River Ophelia wasn’t about sex, (or the sex wasn’t about sex), it was about power. Not many people listened or heard, though. Only some readers.I’ve come here to get away. To disappear. To write.I can’t find the essay I want for my article about the 1990s. I consider the novel I’m reading, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus and wonder whether I should write about it instead? It’s just been reprinted, twenty years after its initial release. The back cover boasts, “widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades.” It was first published in the 1990s. So far it’s about a woman named Chris who’s addictively obsessed with an unavailable man, though I’m yet to unravel Kraus’s particular brand of feminism—abjection? Maybe, maybe … while I think, I click through my storage folder. Half way through, I find a piece I wrote about Kathy Acker in 1997, a tribute of sorts that was never published. The last I’d heard from Kathy before this had been that she was heading down to Mexico to try shark cartilage for her breast cancer. That was just before she died.When I was first introduced to the work of Foucault and Deleuze, it was very political; it was about what was happening to the economy and about changing the political system. By the time it was taken up by the American academy, the politics had gone to hell. (Acker qtd. in Friedman 20)Looking back, I’d have to say my friendship with Kathy Acker was intense and short-lived.In the original I’d written “was a little off and on.” But I prefer the new version. I first met Kathy in person in Sydney, in 1995. We were at a World Art launch at Ariel bookshop and I remember feeling distinctly nervous. As it turned out, I needn’t have been. Nervous, that is.Reading this now brings it all back: how Kathy and I lost touch in the intervening two years and the sudden fact of her death. I turn to the end and read, “She died tragically, not only because she was much too young, but because American literature seems rather frumpy without her, of cancer on the 30th November 1997, aged 53.”The same age as I am now. (While some believe Kathy was 50 when she died, Kathy told me she lied about her age even to the point of changing her passport. Women who lie about their age tend to want to be younger than they are, so I’m sticking with 53.) This coincidence spooks me a little.I make a cup of tea and eat some chocolate.“This could work …” the writer says. My reasons for feeling nervous were historical. I’d spoken to Kathy once previously (before the publication of The River Ophelia on the phone from Seattle to San Francisco in 1993) and the conversation had ended abruptly. I’d wanted to interview Kathy for my PhD on American fiction but Kathy wouldn’t commit. Now I was meeting her face to face and trying to push the past to the back of my mind.The evening turned out to be a memorable one. A whole bunch of us—a mixture of writers, publishers, academics and literati—went out to dinner and then carried on drinking well into the night. I made plans to see Kathy again. She struck me as a warm, generous, sincere and intensely engaging person. It seemed we might become friends. I hesitated: should I include the rest? Or was that too much?The first thing Kathy had said when we were introduced was, “I loved your book, The River Ophelia. I found it as soon as I arrived. I bought it from the bookshop at the airport. I saw your amazing cover and then I read on the back that it was influenced by the work of Kathy Acker. I was like, wow, no one in America has ever put that on the back cover of a novel. So I read it immediately and I couldn’t put it down. I love the way you’ve deconstructed the canon but still managed to put a compelling narrative to it. I never did that.”Why didn’t I include that? It had given me more satisfaction than anything anyone else had said.I remember how quickly I abandoned my bestselling life in Sydney, sexual harassment had all but ruined my career, and exchanged it for an uncertain future in London. My notoriety as an author was damaging my books and my relationship with my publisher had become toxic. The first thing I did in London was hire a lawyer, break my contract with Picador and take both novels out of print.Reality intrudes in the form of a phone call from my mother. Terminally ill with cancer, she informs me that she’s off her food. For a retired chef, the loss of appetite is not inconsiderable. Her dying is a dull ache, a constant tiredness and sadness in me. She’s just arrived in London. I will go there next week to meet her.(1)I first came across Kathy’s work in 1991. I’d just finished my MA thesis on postmodernism and parody and was rewarding myself with some real reading (i.e. not related to my thesis) when I came across the novel Don Quixote. This novel had a tremendous impact on me. Those familiar with DQ may recall that it begins with an abortion that transforms its female narrator into a knight.When she was finally crazy because she was about to have an abortion, she conceived of the most insane idea that any woman can think of. Which is to love. How can a woman love? By loving someone other than herself. (Acker Quixote 9)Kathy’s opening sentences produced a powerful emotional response in me and her bold confronting account of an abortion both put me in touch with feelings I was trying to avoid and connected these disturbing feelings with a broader political context. Kathy’s technique of linking the personal and emotional with the political changed the way I worked as a writer.I’d submitted the piece as an obituary for publication to an Australian journal; the editor had written suggestions in the margin in red. All about making the piece a more conventional academic essay. I hadn’t been sure that was what I wanted to do. Ambitious, creative, I was trying to put poststructuralist theory into practice, to write theoretical fiction. It’s true, I hadn’t been to the Sorbonne, but so what? What was the point of studying theory if one didn’t put it into practice? I was trying to write like French theorists, not to write about them. The editor’s remarks would have made a better academic essay, it’s just I’m not sure that’s where I wanted to go. I never rewrote it and it was never published.I first encountered I Love Dick (2017) during a film course at the AFTVRS when the lecturer presented a short clip of the adaptation for the class to analyse. When I later saw the novel in a bookshop I bought a copy. Given my discovery of the unpublished obituary it is also a bit spooky that I’m reading this book as both Chris Kraus and Kathy Acker had relationships with academic and Semiotext(e) publisher Sylvère Lotringer. Chris as his wife, Kathy as his lover. Kraus wrote a biography of Acker called After Kathy Acker: A Biography, which seems fairly unsympathetic according to the review I read in The Guardian. (Cooke 2017) Intrigued, I add Kraus’s biography to my growing pile of Acker related reading, the Acker/Wark letters I’m Very Into You and Olivia Laing’s novel, Crudo. While I’ve not read the letters yet, Crudo’s breathless yet rhythmic layering of images and it’s fragmented reflections upon war, women and politics reminded me less of Acker and more of Woolf; Mrs Dalloway, in fact.(2)What most inspired me, and what makes Kathy such a great writer, is her manner of writing politically. For the purposes of this piece, when I say Kathy writes politically, I’m referring to what happens when you read her books. That is, your mind—fuelled by powerful feelings—makes creative leaps that link everyday things and ideas with political discourses and debates (for Kathy, these were usually critiques of bourgeois society, of oedipal culture and of the patriarchy).In the first pages of Don Quixote, for example, an abortion becomes synonymous with the process of becoming a knight. The links Kathy makes between these two seemingly unrelated events yields a political message for the creative reader. There is more at stake than just gender-bending or metamorphoses here: a reversal of power seems to have taken place. A relatively powerless woman (a female victim except for the fact that in having an abortion she’s exerting some measure of control over her life), far from being destroyed by the experience of aborting her foetus, actually gains power—power to become a knight and go about the world fulfilling a quest. In writing about an abortion in this way, Kathy challenges our assumptions about this controversial topic: beyond the moral debate, there are other issues at stake, like identity and power. An abortion becomes a birth, rather than a banal tragedy.When I think about the 1990s, I automatically think of shoulder pads, cocktails and expense accounts (the consumption of the former, in my case, dependent on the latter). But on reflection, I think about the corporatisation of the publishing industry, the Backlash and films like Thelma and Louise, (1991) Basic Instinct (1992) and Single White Female (1992). It occurs to me that the Hollywood movie star glamorous #MeToo has its origin in the turbulent 1990s Backlash. When I first saw each of these films I thought they were exciting, controversial. I loved the provocative stance they took about women. But looking back I can’t help wondering: whose stories were they really, why were we hearing them and what was the political point?It was a confusing time in terms of debates about gender equality.Excluding the premise for Thelma and Louise, all three films present as narrative truth scenarios that ran in stark contrast to reality. When it came to violence and women, most domestic homicide and violence was perpetrated by men. And violence towards women, in the 1990s, was statistically on the rise and there’s little improvement in these statistics today.Utter chaos, having a British passport never feels quite so wonderful as it does in the arrivals hall at Heathrow.“Perhaps these films allow women to fantasise about killing the men who are violent towards them?”Nyah, BI is chick killing chick … and think about the moral to the story. Fantasy OK, concrete action painful, even deadly.“Different story today …”How so?“Violent female protagonists are all the rage and definitely profitable. Killing Eve (2018) and A Simple Favour (2018).”I don’t have an immediate answer here. Killing Eve is a TV series, I think aloud, A Simple Favour structurally similar to Single White Female … “Why don’t you try self-publishing? It’ll be 20 years since you took The River Ophelia out of print, bit of an anniversary, maybe it’s time?”Not a bad idea. I’m now on the tube to meet mum at her bed and breakfast but the writer is impatient to get back to work. Maybe I should just write the screenplay instead?“Try both. If you don’t believe in your writing, who else will?”She has a point. I’m not getting anywhere with my new novel.A message pips through on Facebook. Want to catch up?What? Talk about out of the blue. I haven’t heard from Sade in twenty years … and how on earth did he get through my privacy settings?After meeting mum, the next thing I do is go to the doctor. My old doctor from West Kensington, she asks me how I’m going and I say I’m fine except that mum’s dying and this awful narcissistic ex-partner of mine has contacted me on Facebook. She recommends I read the following article, “The Highly Sensitive Person and the Narcissist” (Psychology Today).“Sometimes being a kind caring person makes you vulnerable to abusers.”After the appointment I can’t get her words out of my head.I dash into a Starbucks, I’m in Notting Hill just near the tube station, and read the article on my laptop on wifi. I highlight various sections. Narcissists “have a complete lack of empathy for others including their own family and friends, so that they will take advantage of people to get their own needs and desires met, even if it hurts someone.” That sounds about right, Sade could always find some way of masking his real motives in charm, or twisting reality around to make it look like things weren’t his fault, they were mine. How cleverly he’d lied! Narcissists, I read, are attracted to kind, compassionate people who they then use and lie to without remorse.But the bit that really makes me sit up is towards the end of the article. “For someone on the outside looking at a relationship between a highly sensitive person and a narcissist, it’s all too easy to blame the HSP. How and why would anyone want to stay in such a relationship?” Narcissists are incredibly good at making you doubt yourself, especially the part of you that says: this has happened before, it’ll happen again. You need to leave.The opening paragraph of the psychology textbook I read next uses Donald Trump as an example. Trump is also Patrick Bateman’s hero, the misogynistic serial killer protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious American Psycho. Despite an earlier version that broadly focused on New York fiction of the 1990s, Ellis’s novel and the feminist outcry it provoked became the central topic of my PhD.“Are you alright mum?”I’ve just picked Mum up and I’m driving her to Paris for a night and then on to Switzerland where she’s going to have voluntary euthanasia. Despite the London drizzle and the horrific traffic the whole thing has a Thelma and Louise feel about it. I tell mum and she laughs.“We should watch it again. Have you seen it since it first came out?”“Sounds like a good idea.”Mum, tiny, pointy-kneed and wearing an out-of-character fluoro green beanie given to her at the oncology clinic in Sydney, is being very stoic but I can tell from the way she constantly wrings her hands that she’s actually quite terrified.“OK Louise,” she says as I unfold her Zimmer frame later that evening.“OK Thelma,” I reply as she walks off towards the hotel.Paris is a treat. My brother is waiting inside and we’re hoping to enjoy one last meal together.Mum didn’t want to continue with chemo at 83, but she’s frightened of dying a horrific death. As we approach hotel reception Mum can’t help taking a detour to inspect the dinner menu at the hotel restaurant.“Oysters naturel. That sounds nice.”I smile, wait, and take her by the elbow.I’ve completely forgotten. The interview/review I wrote of Acker’s Pussy, King of the Pirates, in 1995 for Rolling Stone. Where is it? I open my laptop and quickly click through the endless publicity and reviews of The River Ophelia, the interview/review came out around the same time the novel was published, but I can’t find it. I know I had it out just a few months ago, when I was chasing up some freelance book reviews.I make a fresh pot of tea from the mini bar, green, and return to my Acker tribute. Should I try to get it published? Here, or back in Australia? Ever the émigré’s dilemma. I decide I like the Parisian sense of style in this room, especially the cotton-linen sheets.Finally, I find it, it’s in the wrong folder. Printing it out, I remember how Kathy had called her agent and publisher in New York, and her disbelief when I’d told her the book hadn’t been picked up overseas. Kathy’s call resulted in my first New York agent. I scrutinise its pages.Kathy smiles benign childlike creativity in the larger photo, and gestures in passionate exasperation in the smaller group, her baby face framed by countless metal ear piercings. The interview takes place—at Kathy’s insistence—on her futon in her hotel room. My memories clarify. It wasn’t that we drifted apart, or rather we did, but only after men had come between us first. Neither of us had much luck in that department.(4)Kathy’s writing is also political because her characters don’t act or speak the way you’d expect them to. They don’t seem to follow the rules or behave in the way your average fictional character tends to do. From sentence to sentence, Kathy’s characters either change into different people, or live revolutionary lives, or even more radical still, live impossible lives.When the narrator of DQ transforms herself into a knight (and lives an impossible life); she turns a situation in which she is passive and relatively powerless—she is about to be operated on and drugged—into an empowering experience (and lives a creative revolutionary life). Ironically, getting power means she turns herself into a male knight. But Kathy gets around the problem that power is male by not letting things rest there. The female, aborting Kathy isn’t actually replaced by a male knight, bits of him are just grafted onto her. Sure, she sets out on a quest, but the other aspects of her empowerment are pretty superficial: she does adopt a new name (which is more like a disguise), and identity (appearance); and picks up a bad habit or two—a tendency to talk in the language used by knights.“But who’s the father?” the writer wants to know. “I mean isn’t that the real question here?”No, that is exactly not the real question here and not the point. It is not about who the father is—it’s about what happens to a woman who has an unwanted unplanned pregnancy.The phone rings. It’s my brother. Mum’s waiting for me downstairs and the oysters are beckoning.(5)The idea that writing could be political was very appealing. The transformation between my first novel, Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure and my second, The River Ophelia (Picador insisted on publishing them in reverse chronology) was partly a result of my discovery of Kathy’s work and the ideas it set off in me. Kathy wasn’t the first novelist to write politically, but she was the first female novelist to do so in a way that had an immediate impact on me at an emotional level. And it was this powerful emotional response that inspired me as a writer—I wanted to affect my readers in a similar way (because reading Kathy’s work, I felt less alone and that my darkest experiences, so long silenced by shame and skirted around in the interests of maintaining appearances, could be given a voice).We’re driving through Switzerland and I’m thinking about narcissism and the way the narcissists in my personal and professional life overshadowed everything else. But now it’s time to give the rest of the world some attention. It’s also one way of pulling back the power from the psychopaths who rule the world.As we approach Zurich, my mother asks to pull over so she can use the ladies. When she comes out I can see she’s been crying. Inside the car, she reaches for my hand and clasps it. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to say goodbye.”“It’s alright Mum,” I say and hold her while we both cry.A police car drives by and my mother’s eyes snag. Harassed by the police in Australia and unable to obtain Nembutal in the UK, Mum has run out of options.To be a woman in this society is to find oneself living outside the law. Maybe this is what Acker meant when she wrote about becoming a pirate, or a knight?Textual deconstruction can be a risky business and writers like Acker walk a fine line when it comes to the law. Empire of the Senseless ran into a plagiarism suit in the UK and her publishers forced Acker to sign an apology to Harold Robbins (Acker Hannibal Lecter 13). My third novel Dependency similarly fell foul of the law when I discovered that in deconstructing gossip and myths about celebrities, drawing on their lives and then making stuff up, the result proved prophetic. When my publisher, Harper Collins, refused to indemnify me against potential unintended defamation I pulled the book from its contract on the advice of a lawyer. I was worth seven million pounds on paper at that point, the internet travel site my then husband and I had founded with Bob Geldof had taken off, and the novel was a radical hybrid text comprised of Rupert Murdoch’s biography, Shakespeare’s King Lear and Hello Magazine and I was worried that Murdoch might come after me personally. I’d fictionalised him as a King Lear type, writing his Cordelia out of his will and leaving everything to his Goneril and Reagan.Recent theoretical studies argue that Acker’s appropriation and deconstruction constitute a feminist politics as “fragmentation” (June 2) and as “agency” (Pitchford 22). As Acker puts it. “And then it’s like a kid: suddenly a toy shop opens up and the toy shop was called culture.” (Acker Hannibal Lecter 11).We don’t easily fit in a system that wasn’t ever designed to meet our needs.(6)By writing about the most private parts of women’s lives, I’ve tried to show how far there is to go before women and men are equal on a personal level. The River Ophelia is about a young woman whose public life might seem a success from the outside (she is a student doing an honours year at university in receipt of a scholarship), but whose private life is insufferable (she knows nothing about dealing with misogyny on an intimate level and she has no real relationship-survival skills, partly as a result of her family history, partly because the only survival skills she has have been inscribed by patriarchy and leave her vulnerable to more abuse). When Justine-the-character learns how to get around sexism of the personal variety (by re-inventing her life through parodies of classic texts about oedipal society) she not only changes her life, but she passes on her new-found survival skills to the reader.A disturbing tale about a young university student who loses herself in a destructive relationship, The River Ophelia is a postmodern novel about domestic violence and sexual harassment in the academy, contrary to its marketing campaign at the time. It’s protagonist, Justine, loves Sade but Sade is only interested in sex; indeed, he’s a brutish sex addict. Despite this, Justine can’t seem to leave: for all her education, she’s looking for love and commitment in all the wrong places. While the feminist lore of previous generations seems to work well in theory, Justine can’t seem to make it work in practise. Owning her power and experimenting with her own sexuality only leaves her feeling more despairing than before. Unconventional, compelling and controversial, The River Ophelia became an instant best-seller and is credited with beginning the Australian literary movement known as grunge/dirty realism.But there is always the possibility, given the rich intertextuality and self referentiality, that The River Ophelia is Justine’s honours thesis in creative writing. In this case, Sade, Juliette, Ophelia, Hamlet, Bataille, Simone, Marcelle and Leopold become hybrids made up from appropriated canonical characters, fragments of Justine’s turbulent student’s world and invented sections. But The River Ophelia is also a feminist novel that partly began as a dialogue with Ellis whose scandalous American Psycho it parodies even as it reinvents. This creative activity, which also involves the reader by inviting her to participate in the textual play, eventually empowers Justine over the canon and over her perpetrator, Sade.Another hotel room. This one, just out of Zürich, is tiny. I place my suitcase on the rack beneath the window overlooking the narrow street and start to unpack.“Hasn’t this all been said before, about The River Ophelia?” The writer says, trying out the bed. I’m in the middle of an email about self-publishing a new edition of TRO.Some of it. While the grunge label has been refuted, Acker’s influence has been underplayed.Acker often named her protagonists after herself, so losing the Acker part of my textual filiation plays into the whole grunge/dirty realism marketing campaign. I’ve talked about how I always name protagonists after famous women but not linked this to Acker. Bohemia Beach has a protagonist named after Cathy as in Wuthering Heights. Justine of The River Ophelia was doubly an Acker trait: firstly, she was named Justine after De Sade’s character and is a deconstruction of that character, and secondly she was named Justine self-reflexively after me, as a tribute to Kathy as in Kathy Goes to Haiti.The other context for The River Ophelia that has been lost is to do with the early work of Mary Gaitskill, and Catherine Texier. The narcissists were so destructive and so powerful they left no time for the relatively more subtle Gaitskill or Texier. Prototypes for Sex in the City, the 1990s was also a time when Downtown New York women writers explored the idea that gender equality meant women could do anything men did sexually, that they deserved the full gamut of libertine sexual freedoms. Twenty years on it should also be said that women who push the envelope by writing women protagonists who are every bit as sexually transgressive as men, every bit as addictively self-destructive as male protagonists deserve not to be shamed for that experimentation. They deserve to be celebrated and read.AfterwordI’d like to remember Kathy as I knew her briefly in Sydney. A bottle-blonde with a number two haircut, a leopard-skin bikini and a totally tattooed body, she swam a surprisingly genteel breast-stroke in the next lane in one of the world’s most macho lap-swimming pools.ReferencesA Simple Favour. Dir. Paul Feig. Lionsgate, 2018.Acker, Kathy. Don Quixote. London: Collins, 1986.———. Empire of the Senseless. New York: Grove, 1988.———. Hannibal Lecter, My Father. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.———. Kathy Goes to Haiti. New York: Grove Press/Atlantic Monthly, 1994.——— and McKenzie Wark. I’m Very into You: Correspondence 1995-1996. New York: Semiotext(e), 2015.Basic Instinct. Dir. Paul Verhoeven. TriStar Pictures, 1992.Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Norton and Co, 2003.Bushnell, Candace. Sex in the City. United States: Grand Central Publishing, 1996.Cooke, Rachel. “Review of After Kathy Acker: A Biography by Chris Kraus—Baffling Life Study.” The Guardian 4 Sep. 2017. 4 Dec. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/04/after-kathy-acker-a-biography-chris-kraus-review>.Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage, 1991.Ettler, Justine. Bohemia Beach. Melbourne: Transit Lounge. 2018.———. “Kathy Acker: King of the Pussies.” Review of Pussy, King of the Pirates, by Kathy Acker. Rolling Stone. Nov. 1995: 60-61.———. Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure. Sydney: Picador, 1996.———. “La Trobe University Essay: Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, and Catherine Texier’s Break Up.” Australian Book Review, 1995.———. The Best Ellis for Business: A Re-Examination of the Mass Media Feminist Critique of “American Psycho.” PhD. Sydney: University of Sydney, 2013.———. The River Ophelia. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women. New York: Crown, 1991.Friedman, Ellen G. “A Conversation with Kathy Acker.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9.3 (Fall 1989): 20-21.Gaitskill, Mary. Bad Behaviour. New York: Random House, 1988.I Love Dick. Dir. Jill Soloway. Amazon Video, 2017.June, Pamela B. The Fragmented Female Body and Identity: The Postmodern Feminist and Multiethnic Writings of Toni Morrison, Therese Huk, Kyung Cha, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Gayl Jones, Emma Perez, Paula Gunn Allen, and Kathy Acker. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010.Killing Eve. Dir. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. BBC America, 2018.Kraus, Chris. After Kathy Acker: A Biography. London: Penguin, 2017.———. I Love Dick. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2016.Laing, Olivia. Crudo. London: Picador, 2018.Lee, Bandy. The Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. New York: St Martin’s Press. 2017.Lombard, Nancy, and Lesley McMillan. “Introduction.” Violence against Women. Eds. Nancy Lombard and Lesley McMillan. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2013.Pitchford, Nicola. Tactical Readings: Feminist Postmodernism in the Novels of Kathy Acker and Angela Carter. London: Associated Uni Press, 2002.Schiffrin, André. The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read. London and New York: Verso, 2000.Shakespeare, William. King Lear. London: Penguin Classics, 2015.Siegle, Robert. Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency. United States: John Hopkins Press, 1989.Single White Female. Dir. Barbet Schroeder. Columbia Pictures, 1992.Texier, Catherine. Panic Blood. London: Collins, 1991.Thelma and Louise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1991.Ward, Deborah. “Sense and Sensitivity: The Highly Sensitive Person and the Narcissist.” Psychology Today (16 Jan. 2012). 4 Dec. 2018 <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sense-and-sensitivity/201201/the-highly-sensitive-person-and-the-narcissist>.