Abstract
Recently, automobile industries have been developing many structural automotive parts made of thin, high-strength steel strips to produce safer and more environmentally friendly cars. The roll forming process has been considered one of the most efficient processes in manufacturing high-strength steel parts because it is a high-speed process that forms sheets in increments. However, most automotive parts vary longitudinally in their cross-sections. Therefore, it is difficult to apply the roll forming process to automotive parts made of high-strength steel. A variable section roll forming process has been proposed in recent studies. The rotational axes of the forming rolls are fixed, and the forming rolls have three-dimensional shape. As such, the cross-section of the part varies linearly along its length, and the angle between the bend line and longitudinal axis is less than 1 degree. Thus, the rate of cross-sectional variation along the length is relatively small. In this study, the rate of cross-sectional change along the length of a forming roll has been increased. Moreover, the angle between the bend line and longitudinal axis has been increased up to 15 degrees. The variable sections of the forming rolls have been designed for high strength steel parts with a symmetric u-type cross-section that varies linearly and symmetrically along the longitudinal axis.
