Advanced material forming: Novel processes, mechanics, characterization, and control

A sudden increase in the usage of automotive vehiclesresults in sudden increases in the fuel consumption whichresults in an increase in air pollution. To cope up with thischallenge federal government is implying the stricterenvironmental regulation to decrease air pollution. To savefrom the environmental regulation penalty vehicle industry isresearching innovation which would reduce vehicle weight anddecrease the fuel consumption. Thus, the innovation related tolight-weighting is not only an option anymore but became amandatory necessity to decrease fuel consumption. To achievethis target, the industry has been looking at fabricatingcomponents from high strength to ultra-high strength steels orlightweight materials. With the usage of advanced high strengthsteels, the lightweight was achieved by reducing a gagethickness without compromising the strength aspect. Howeverdue to their high strength property often challenges occurredare higher machine tonnage requirement, sudden fracture,geometric defect, etc. The geometric defect comes from theelastic recovery of a material, which is also known as aspringback. Springback is commonly known as amanufacturing defect due to the geometric error in the part,which would not be able to fit in the assembly withoutsecondary operation or compensation in the forming process. Itis learned that the springback of the material increases with anincrease in the material strength and/or decrease in materialthickness. In advanced high strength steels, higher strength andlower gage thickness options make the part prone to higherspringback. Due to these many challenges with the materialsand their properties which affect the springback, other researchroutes involved are innovative forming processes which wouldreduce the springback such as applying electricity through thematerial after forming and before the release of the load,performing warm or hot forming, die compensation, etc. Onesuch innovative and patented process which is studied in thepaper is using rollers in the tool i.e., in die and punch during the forming process. In this paper, the 2D channel strip of thealuminum 2024 high strength and thin material will be used inthe bending processes. The process will be simulated inABAQUS finite element software. First, the conventionalchannel bending process will be performed and springback willbe analyzed as compared to the desired shape. Then the toolrollers will be implied to the die and punch corner radius andthen the channel bending process will be performed andspringback will be analyzed. The roller rotations will be setconstant in this study, but the motion i.e., clockwise orcounterclockwise in both die and punch will be studied on thespringback of the channel. In addition, the no rotation of theroller effect on the springback will be studied and results willbe compared. Further the maximum stress before and afterspringback and the stress distribution all cases will be analyzedand presented.