Springback and Twist Prediction of Roll Formed Parts

In the construction market, Roll Forming is the reference forming process. Numerous parts are achieved in such a way: purlins, steeldecks or suspended ceiling parts are examples of it. Roll Forming is also more and more used in the automotive industry, as it constitutes a good alternative to forming for High Strength Steels.
Among the major requirements to obtain a defect-free product are outlined: the accurate geometry of the part, the taking into account of the springback as well as the prediction of twist. Furthermore, the roll forming operation could be only the first forming operation: the part could be curved or locally deep drawn afterwards. FE codes could allow fulfilling these requirements. However, they need significant advances in terms of material model description and numerical development.
This paper presents the work done in order to predict the geometry and the behaviour of a roll formed part:
First the material is characterized in complex strain paths in order to identify elaborated microstructural model like Teodosiu’s one. This model is able to take into account Bauschinger effect, orthogonal strain paths, isotropic/kinematic hardening. The METAFOR code is then used to have a better understanding of the mechanics of the deformation of the strip during the forming process.
Several experimental campaigns were performed on the I-R&D ARCELOR roll forming machine to define a strong database in order to validate the numerical results. The geometry of machine as well as the shape of the channels inside and outside the RF machine were measured. Some experiments were even carried out in order to generate defects like twist in the roll formed profile.