FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

SUPERPLASTIC FORMING IN A CONICAL DIE

Technical Report

Released date: 12/14/2010

Responsible Engineer:

Diego Doin Hoepfner

diegohoepfner@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Description and Objectives. 3 Input Data. 3 Model 3 Material 4 Loading. 5 Results. 5 Conclusions. 8

1.

Description and Objectives

Superplastic forming nonlinear analysis of a circular plate in a conical mold, performed at high temperature through gas pressure on plate, with the following objectives: Determine the best plate thickness to be used to obtain complete mold filling; Find the ideal pressure curve to be applied in real conformation;

2.

Input Data

Geometry: Conical_MATRIX.igs - updated in 12/10/2011

Image 01 - Forming die.

Solver used: ABAQUS

3.

Model

Since the group plate-mold has axial symmetry, only one quarter of the parts was simulated. To construct the finite element model, the plate and the contact portion of the die with it, were meshed with linear quadrilateral shell type elements (QUAD4). As it isn't the interest of this work a survey of efforts in the mold, the elements were modeled as rigid (rigid body). As boundary conditions were set the constraint in the 6 DOF of the mold reference point (it controls the rigid body movement) and in the plate's circular edge to simulate the clamp effect on the plate, preventing from slipping. Furthermore, symmetry boundary conditions were used in the other two plate's edges.

Rigid mold

Deformable plate

XY Plane Symmetry YZ Plane Symmetry 6 DOF constraint

Image 02 - FEM boundary conditions.

4.

Material

The ABAQUS solver uses a viscoplastic formulation to simulate the superplasticity, and the material used was formulated by the creep model, whose constitutive equation is:

where Thus,

is the strain-rate sensitivity coefficient and and .

the material constant.

The material to be formed will be aluminum alloy AA5083, the properties required for simulation

are as follows: Process temperature: 515C Strain-rate sensitivity coefficient: 0,35 Poisson's ratio: 0,33 Young's modulus: 70 GPa K constant: 108 MPa.s-1 Friction factor between the die and plate: 0,2 Strain-rate: 1 x 10-3 s-1

5.

Loading

Pressure was applied across the upper surface of the plate, which was controlled by pressure control algorithm in the ABAQUS viscoplastic analysis. Since the superplastic forming is also a case of creep, the model simulation with viscoplastic formulations with the control algorithm is valid.. The pressure control in ABAQUS is done through a routine that controls the ratio between the highest strain rate of last increment and the nominal strain rate, in order to maintain the strain rate close to a constant value:

The initial pressure was set to 0.02 MPa with a range of permissible amplitude from 0.0001 MPa to 1000 MPa, and controlled by the algorithm to meet the specified strain rate up to the filling of the die.

6.

Results

Three simulations were performed with plates of 2.0 mm, 3.0 mm and 4.0 mm under the same strain rate. These tests had two objectives, first check the influence of increasing the initial thickness in the forming pressure, and second the influence of initial thickness on the final thickness of the plate. In the Image below, we can see the thickness gradient of a sheet with initial thickness 3.0 mm after the forming process.

Image 03 - Thickness variation of 3,0 mm sheet at strain-rate of 0,001 s-1. Knowing that the cone central region is the critical point of forming, we obtained the thickness variations of the cone center in function of time for the three plates.

Modelo_3,00.png

Image 04 - Cone center region.

4,0mm sheet 3,0mm sheet 2,0mm sheet

Graph 01 - Thickness variation of cone center element to the three plates vs. time.

In the table below we can see the value of the final thickness to the cone center region according to the initial thickness of the sheets.

Espessura Inicial [mm] 2,0 3,0 4,0

Espessura Final do Ponto Crtico [mm] 0,30 0,51 0,61

In the graph below we see the curves of pressure versus time obtained from the ABAQUS control algorithm, which maintain the constant strain rate during forming.

Graph 02 - Forming pressure vs. time for the three sheets analyzed.

7.

Conclusions
The minimum recorded thickness value occurred in the central region of the cone, that is the only region which poses a risk of tearing during the process. For Graph 01 it can be seen that curves in the region of maximum deformation converge to values very close in thickness, this indicates that the geometric shape of the die has a greater influence on the final thickness of the formed part than the initial thickness of plate. We recommend the adoption of the 3.0 mm sheet because it has the best ratio final plate thickness/weight. It also has a applying curve pressure relatively smooth, easy to implement in the device.