FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION OF SHEET METAL DEEP DRAWING USING EXPLICIT CODE AND RESULT VALIDATION

Metal forming process requires lot of trials to arrive at the tool design to produce defect free parts. The design of new forming tools gets more problematic as the geometries get more complicated and the materials less formable. Today, metal forming simulation is an effective technique for predicting the formability of automotive parts. Compared with conventional methods such as the use of try-out tools, metal forming simulation enables a significant increase in the number of tool designs that can be tested before hard tools are manufactured. A significant understanding into the result of the forming operation can be gained as it is possible to use sheet-metal- forming simulation at an early stage of the design process, for instance in the preliminary design stage. This work has been done to study the explicit nonlinear behaviour of sheet metal forming process utilizing the FEA software. This work will help in setting a benchmark for the development of new forming tools. The simulation results are in concurrence with experimental results. The analysis is helpful for the prediction of thickness variation of the product prior to the carryout of the actual drawing process. The analysis may be used for estimating the critical thickness that might initiate the failure of the product and also to set the minimum clearance between the punch and die. Any changes in the tool design, new ideas can be easily incorporated into the process without extra costs. With the help of simulation results the major parameters that affect a stable forming process were found.