Sheet Metal Blank Development of a Deep Drawing Fan Support Using Theoretical Rules and FEM

Deep drawing is a cost effective sheet metal forming process to produce many industrial components. However, complex geometrical drawn parts are difficult to form due to several modes and conditions of the material flow. Commonly problems associated to the forming operation are wrinkling and tearing defects, which affect the cost and quality of the parts. Actually, there are not theoretical methods developed in the literature yet, so the trial and error method are used to reduce or eliminate the deep drawing defects or inclusive is utilized in the earlier production stages, resulting in higher costs and longer production times. This paper describe a proposed solution to reduce or eliminate the wrinkles defects on the flanges of an industrial fan support that result from applying the forming process. An analysis procedure based on the development of the correct sheet metal blank considering three different blank geometries was proposed. The analysis include the analytical methods available in the literature, the simulation with a computer program based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) and experimentation. FEM model, simulation and results, these were validated by measuring the thickness profile on the flanges of a deep drawing part, before and after the procedure implementation. The results have shown that combining both the analytical and FEM methods, were possible to know the influence degree of the sheet metal blank geometry to reduce or eliminate the wrinkle defect and these can be used as an effective design tool.