It was found that the effect of the friction between the roll and the workpiece on the spread ratio in flat rolling processes varies with the width-to-height ratio and the reduction in height by Tozawa, Oh and kobayashi numerically. In the present study, the barrelling profile accompanying the width spread was predicted by using the energy method proposed by Kato, which is known to be one of the most advanced method for the three dimensional analysis of the rolling process. The modified velocity field was applied to compute the width spread and the result was verified by experiments. the analysis by the energy method gave the result that the spread ratio increases with the friction factor when the width-to-height ratio is 1 and decreases when the ratio is larger then 2, being consistent with the results of Tozawa and Oh. Nevertheless the cold rolling experiment for pure aluminium showed that the spread ratio decreases with the increasing friction factor irrespective of the width-to-hight ratio.