Abstract: The cold rolling process entails coupled elastoplastic deformation of the strip and elastic flattening of the work rolls. The complexity from nonlinear strain gradients and inhomogeneous contact conditions poses significant challenges to eluci-dating interfacial behaviors within the deformation zone. With the development of cold-rolled strip toward higher strength and thinner gauge, conventional analytical models based on simplified assumptions fail to adequately capture the intricate physical mechanism. In order to display the characteristics and behaviors within the deformation zone and enable fun-damental exploration of deformation mechanism for the high-strength thin strip, a theoretical modeling framework is constructed: (1) Based on the elastoplastic deformation characteristics of the strip, the deformation zone is partitioned into entry elastic zone, plastic zone and exit elastic zone; (2) considering the slip or stick friction contact behaviors between the rolled strip and the work rolls, the plastic deformation zone is further subdivided into backward slip zone, stick zone and forward slip zone; (3) not using the traditional circular elastic flattening approach, the noncircular flattening curve is analytically expressed by combining the rolling stress distribution with the elastic half-space theory. Subsequently, a numerical iteration method driven by mechanism-data fusion is proposed to decouple the nonlinear roll-strip interactions and determine the key process parameters, which can characterize the distinct deformation zones, including rolling normal stress, friction tangential stress, roll flattening curve, contact arc length, total rolling force, and forward slip. Furthermore, an elastoplastic finite element method model for rolling process is established to verify the presented approach via rolling stress distribution and roll flattening curve, and the calculated parameters of rolling force and forward slip are validated by the actual process data. In addition, the influence of process parameters on interfacial behavior evolution is discussed, and the presented approach is effectively applied to investigate the industrial dynamic rolling process. The proposed approach enables accurate calculation and mechanistic explanation of negative forward slip phenomena, offering theoretical support for practical process optimization.