4. Conclusion

As with all plastic forming operations, edge bending of HLE steel sheets leads to changes in material behavior and geometric errors on the product.

Measurements carried out at various stages of the industrial process have shown that microhardness is a largely satisfactory technique for examining changes in the condition of sheet metal during the various sequences to which it is exposed. Straightening, widely adopted in industry but little studied experimentally, has been carefully studied as a function of setting parameters. The influence of straightening on material behavior has been defined, in an attempt to provide some additional data on the evolution of the microstructure once the plastic deformation process has been activated.

Microhardness measurements show that they can be used for much more than just quantifying work hardening within...