Modelling and simulation of the influence of forming processes on the structural behavior of high strength steels

The paper first describes experiments and modeling concerning the identification of material behavior for high strength steels with phase transformations associated to plastic deformation. The experiments consist of tensile and bulging tests carried out on 316L stainless steels and TRIP 700 steels used in automotive industry. These experiments have permitted to determine the hardening curves of such materials vs. the martensite volume fraction associated to plastic deformation. It has been demonstrated that the stress triaxiality has a major role in the martenstic transformation and a model is proposed to define the flow stress vs. effective strain accounting planar anisotropy and variation of martenstic volume fraction. Then a plasticity model has been proposed in an anisotropic form and the related flow rules have been defined. The resulting model has been implemented in different finite elements software, and applied in numerical simulations of stamping and hydroforming of typical components to prove the effects of forming processes on the resulting properties of the components. Finally, the structural behavior of the resulting components is investigated and the effects of forming processes on the resulting structural behaviour are analyzed. Two cases are presented, one concerns the deep drawing of a cylindrical cup and the other concerns the stamping of a closed U channel used as a structural part for crash frames. Is has been clearly proved that the variation of martensite volume fraction arising during processing has a strong influence on the resulting behaviour of the parts considering springback and crash resistance.