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The sequence of manufacturing processes involved in the making of truck frame rail sections leave a certain amount of imperfections in the form of plastic deformation and residual stresses in it. These residual stresses along with the externally induced loading stresses together should not be allowed to cross the yield limit of the frame material as it leads to premature failure of frame rail before giving its expected life. One such manufacturing process inducing premature failure is studied in detail using experimental analyses and presented in this paper. The kink bending process employed on the already formed and bolt hole punched C section frame rail, leads to plastic deformation and material crowding around the bolt hole located near the kink bend area of the frame flange.

Cold formed carbon steel C sections are often employed as load carrying structural members in heavy commercial trucks. The cold forming operations employed during the making of these members generate certain amount of residual stresses throughout the sections. As the residual stresses play a significant role in determining the structural behavior of truck frame rail members, a careful assessment of residual stresses resulting from cold forming operation is needed. In the present investigation, residual stresses in frame rail corner sections were numerically predicted with the help of non-linear Finite Element (FE) analysis in ABAQUS and compared with the experimentally measured residual stress values using X-ray diffraction technique. It has been observed that the numerically predicted residual stresses are in agreement with the experimentally measured residual stresses in forming direction.