The influence of the kinematic hardening on the FEM simulation of Tension Levelling Process

Abstract Tension levelling is used in the steel industry to remove shape defects present in cold rolled strip. This technology is increasingly being employed by steel makers to level AHSS steels, because conventional roll levelers are not able to correct explicit local errors like wavy edges and central buckles. In this study, the influence the hardening law has on the simulation of tension levelling processes using FEM is studied. Tension-compression tests have been performed in a DP1000 steel using several reversal cycles and a mixed nonlinear kinematic hardening law has been fitted to the experimental data using different amount of backstress tensors. It is observed that numerical results are influenced by the introduced hardening law and thus is an important input when simulating the tension levelling process.