A major problem in sheet bending is to compensate for springback. Analytical descriptions are not sufficiently general to accommodate influences from the material and the geometry due to the simplifications that have to be made. Practical experiments are still needed to be able to compensate for springback. The aim of this work has been to test the finite-element method on its abilities to predict springback for free bending in a V-die. The work shows that the finite-element method can be used to predict springback off-line. The true stress-true strain curve from a tensile test is used as the material description. Springback has been studied for eight different materials of varying thickness. The process has been simulated with the code Nike2d and the results from the simulations compared with those from experiments, good correlation between the simulations and the experiments being achieved. © 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.