The design and development of new cold roll formed products can incur significant cost and the product may not be optimised for either performance or manufacture. This paper describes a new method to develop an optimum structural design of profile by cold roll forming using a combined approach of finite element analysis and optimisation techniques. To illustrate the concept, the design and development of a new channel beam and a new drain grating subjected to bending are presented. The two case studies, demonstrate how a roll formed profile may be optimised to improved structural performance through use of stiffeners and/or dimples. Improved performance of cold roll formed products is achieved by increasing the strength of the product without increasing the amount of the material used. The results of this paper clearly demonstrate an efficient and effective method and tool set to optimise design for performance and manufacture of cold roll formed products
