Flexible roll forming

Abstract Roll forming is one of the most common sheet metal forming processes to produce continuously a large variety of profiles with constant cross section in the longitudinal direction at high production rates. Flexible roll forming (FRF) is a new advanced variant of the roll forming process that has been developed to produce variable cross section profiles that are commonly used in the automotive, railway, ship construction, and building industries. As with all new forming processes, the deformation mechanics of FRF is still not fully understood and, therefore, the aim of this chapter is to investigate material flow and failure by wrinkling by combining experimental results with numerical predictions derived from finite element analysis. The presentation allows readers to understand the physics behind the distribution and evolution of stresses and strains with time and also to realize how the combined influence of effective strain and stress triaxiality can be used to investigate the occurrence of flange wrinkling in variable cross section profiles produced by FRF.