Residual stress is the main cause of flatness defects in sheet metal and the basic method to improve the shape quality of the sheet is to reduce and eliminate the residual stress by multi-roll levelling. The curvature coupling between repeated sheet bendings in multi-roll levelling greatly affects the accuracy of the analysis of the residual stress evolution, which is rarely considered in current research. Aiming to address this problem, a method for eliminating residual stress by multi-roll

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... elling based on curvature coupling is discussed in this article. An evaluation criterion and an analysis model are proposed to investigate the evolution of the residual stress in multi-roll levelling considering the curvature coupling between bendings. The effects of the intermesh of the work rolls and the plastic deformation of the sheet on the residual stress are also discussed. The results show that multi-roll levelling will cause rolling residual stress while reducing the initial residual stress of the sheet and the larger plastic deformation caused by the intermesh of the work rolls at the entry is beneficial for the complete elimination of the initial residual stress, but the rolling residual stress will increase at the same time. Therefore, the total residual stress of the sheet after levelling depends on the appropriate levelling parameters.