Numerical simulation of the roll forming of thin-walled sections and evaluation of corner strength enhancement

• The paper presents a FE model for simulating cold roll forming.
• Stainless and high-strength steels are considered.
• The corners strength enhancement is reported for each simulation.
• The numerical predictions are compared with theoretical models.

Cold roll forming modifies the mechanical properties of thin-walled profiles by strain hardening. The understanding of this phenomenon, which is rather good for profiles made of traditional construction steel, is mandatory for assessing the member resistance. Less information is however available for profiles made of materials exhibiting a pronounced degree of non-linearity of the stress–strain curve such as high-strength and stainless steels. Current codes generally encounter difficulties for modelling this fabrication process because of the size of industrial mills. Indeed, accurate modelling of the continuous cold roll forming process using finite elements requires a huge number of elements leading to excessive CPU times. Therefore, modellers usually reduce the geometry of the formed sheet or increase the size of the finite elements, inducing a loss of accuracy in the results. In this work, the finite element software METAFOR is used to model cold roll forming of channel profiles made of high-strength and stainless steels. The numerical results, expressed in terms of corner strength enhancement versus radius-to-thickness ratio, are compared against an existing predictive model.