Tailored Profiles Made of Tailor Rolled Strips by Roll Forming - Part 1 of 2

To fully exploit the potential of sheet and profiles, various technologies to produce tailored blanks and profiles have been developed [1,2]. In earlier work [3] it has been shown that Strip Profile Rolling (SPR) can be used to produce metal strips with a predefined thickness distribution across the width of the strip. Building upon this knowledge, in two subsequent papers the extended goal of the project is presented. Therein is demonstrated that Strip Profile Rolling can be applied very effectively using a combination of roll forming (part 1) as well as further processing by roll forming (see part 2) to allow for the production of profiles with varying wall thickness in their cross section. To achieve the goal of part 1, a numerical model describing SPR was developed and used to study the influencing process parameters on spread and bulge formation. As a result of this parametric study, an optimized roll design and rolling sequence was developed to produce a demonstrator strip on a 12 stand roll forming mill manufactured by the company Dreistern [4]. Starting with a conventional strip out of DC01 steel (width 170?mm, thickness 2.5?mm), 29 rolling passes were necessary to achieve the desired geometry (width 186?mm, thickness 2.5?mm with a longitudinal groove being 64?mm wide where the thickness is reduced to 1.5?mm). In the second part of the process chain the coils produced by Strip Profile Rolling were successfully roll formed into a circular tube of 60?mm.