Finite Element Simulation of MultiStage Deep Experimental Results

The plastic forming process of sheet plate takes an important place in forming metals. The traditional techniques of tool design for sheet forming operations used in industry are experimental and expensive methods. Prediction of the forming results, determination of the punching force, blank holder forces and the thickness distribution of the sheet metal will decrease the production cost and time of the material to be formed. In this paper, multistage deep drawing simulation of an Industrial Part has been presented with finite element method. The entire production steps with additional operations such as intermediate annealing and springback has been simulated by ABAQUS software under axisymmetric conditions. The simulation results such as sheet thickness distribution, Punch force and residual stresses have been extracted in any stages and sheet thickness distribution was compared with experimental results. It was found through comparison of results, the FE model have proven to be in close agreement with those of experiment. Keywords—Deep drawing, Finite element method, Simulation. I. INTRODUCTION commonly used sheet metal forming process is deep drawing process. In this process, hollow products are produced in 1� step drawing or multistep drawing. Multistep drawing processes are usually applied to forming parts that have geometrical complexity or formability problems and cannot be formed by 1� step forming. In these cases, one of the most critical and challenging issues is to determine minimum required forming steps and the corresponding part shapes in any forming steps (1). Traditional design methods for sheet metal forming are usually based on a trialanderror or empirical approach. Recently, due to the demand of high precision and reliability in formed metal parts, these methods are difficult and sometimes handicapped to provide a solution.