Journal of Materials Processing Technology 120 (2002) 111114

Research on applying one-step simulation to blank design

in sheet metal forming
Ye Wang*, Qiyu Shen, Yuguo Wang, Yongqing Zhang
Department of Plasticity Engineering A9829021, Shanghai Jiao tong University, 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai 200030, China
Received 5 July 2000

Abstract
Applying one-step simulation to blank design in sheet metal forming was investigated. The authors have put forward and fullled the idea
that blank design should combine with the material properties and other industrial art conditions. The blank design for various depths of
square box was also completed. The results that were compared to those obtained by DYNAFORM showed that the blanks designed through
one-step simulation method are reasonable. The study of an industrial example also indicates that the one-step simulation method can be
used in large size auto-panel blank design. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Sheet metal forming; One-step simulation; Blank design

1. Introduction
There are numerous factors that inuence sheet metal
forming, such as the shape of the die, the properties of
the material, the shape of the blank, the boundary conditions,
the friction and the lubrication conditions between the
die and the blank, and so on. In the design of industrial
art for a metal forming process, one must consider them all
together. The blank shape and size is a very important factor.
Not only will it directly inuence the cost and the efciency
of the material, but also a reasonable design is likely to
improve the state of the part's strain and stress, increase the
limiting drawing ratio, make a smooth transition in the
thickness direction, and produce better quality products.
In addition, during auto-panel forming, the designing of
the blank shape is inuential in whether or not a part can be
produced.
Currently the main ways to design a blank are a geometric
modelling method [1], a calculation method based on slipling eld theory [2], or reliance on experience. Up to now a
general method to design all kinds of blank shape has not
been proposed. The existing method do not consider the
properties of the material and the boundary conditions to the
fullest extent, so that the blank shape that is obtained using
these methods is very approximate. The authors consider
that a perfect blank shape design must meet the following:
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wangye@public2.sta.net.cn (Y. Wang).

1. Universal. The efficiency of the method cannot be

influenced by the parts' shape. This means that a general
method must be able to solve all kinds of blank shape
design problems.
2. Accuracy. Given the industrial art conditions, the blank
design can work out a good quality product. Thus, it
need to combine with the other industrial art factors and
the properties of the material.
3. Integration. A design which uses FEA simulation can be
integrated with CAD software.
The one-step simulation method [38] is a kind of FEA
simulation based on deformation theory. When the shape of
the product or the parts is known, it is possible to analyse its
deformation very quickly. This paper used one-step simulation to study the designing of the blank shape.
2. One-step simulation
Metal forming is a non-linear problem. An increment
method is often used to solve this kind of problem. When the
die and the blank's boundary are unknown, the increment
method cannot be used. If it is assumed that the load path
during the deformation is proportional, then there is only the
need to know the beginning and the ending state of the blank
deformation and the intermediate state can be ignored. This
is the basic theory of one-step simulation. The method
begins with the shape of the product C, looking upon it
as the ending state of the parts. Then it is made discrete: with

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Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 120 (2002) 111114

Fig. 1. The sketch map of one-step method.

FEA method, one can locate the initial place P0 of the part's
node P at the initial blank C0 under a certain boundary
condition (Fig. 1). By comparing the node location between
the blank and the part, the distribution of the stress, strain
and the thickness in the part can be obtained.
From the above analysis, it is known that with the one-step
method the location of the discrete part's node at the blank
can be obtained. The nodes at the outline of the part
contribute to be the outline of the blank.
3. An example
3.1. The design of a square box blank
Using the die set shown in Fig. 2, the stroke is set to three
values (10, 20, 30 mm) and the shape of the workpiece is
determined. It is assumed that the workpiece's anges are all
5 mm and that the material is killed steel.

Fig. 2. Square box drawing die set (dimensions: mm).

A 14 part of the workpiece is taken to generate an FEA

model, and the one-step method is used to calculate the
blank shape with the blank holding force set to 20 MPa.
Figs. 35 showed the simulation result. From these gures, it
can be seen that when the stroke increases, the size of the
blank increases at the same time. When the resistance force
at the square box edge is smaller, the material at the edge is
drawn in much more than the material at the corner. When
the stroke reaches 30 mm, the blank shape is close to
circular.
To validate the blank design obtained by the one-step
method, the results are compared with the simulation result
from DYNAFORM software (Fig. 6). From this gure, it can

Fig. 3. The FEA model and the blank (stroke 10 mm).

Fig. 4. The FEA model and the blank (stroke 20 mm).

Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 120 (2002) 111114

113

Fig. 5. The FEA model and the blank (stroke 30 mm).

Fig. 6. The mesh of the square box deformation obtained from DYNAFORM.

be seen that with the increasing of the stroke, the outline of

the blank from DYNAFORM becomes different from the
outline of the designed blank. The difference at the corner is
very obvious. The amount of drawing at the corner that is
obtained from the one-step method is larger than that from
DYNAFORM. The main reason for this is that the deformation occurring at the corner is more complicated than that at
the edge; but the one-step method assumes that the deformation during metal forming is proportional, and the inuence of the load path is ignored. However, the shape of the
blank is reasonable.
3.2. A design for a Transit car back-wheel hubcap
To validate the universality and the stability of one-step
simulation, a Transit car back-wheel hubcap is selected

for analysis. The overall outline of the part has X, Y

and Z dimensions of 764, 624 and 193 mm. As it is a
symmetry part, only 14 of its body is used to establish an
FEA model (Fig. 7). There are 1328 nodes and 2539 units
in all.
To improve the resistance force at the edge and the large
radius arc part and make the deformation uniform, four
draw-beads are set-up with different resistance force (Fig. 8).
To adjust the draw-bead force, the Nos. 14 draw-bead
resistance are set in the proportion of 1:2:1:2. The different
draw-bead data sets shown in Table 1 are used to calculate
the blank under a different industrial art conditions (Fig. 9).
From this, one can study how the different draw-bead
resistance force setting inuences the shape and the size
of the blank. The deformation feature of this workpiece
is that it is liable to crinkle at the jamb wall, so with the

Fig. 7. The workpiece and its FEA model 14 .

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Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 120 (2002) 111114

to DBF4, the deformation of the blank is close to its

deformation limit. Thus DBF3 and the corresponding blank
are selected as the suitable industrial art condition.
To validate the blank that was obtained from the one-step
method, the Ford company's blank forming analysis software MTLFRM, which is based on the increment method,
was used to analyse the industrial art condition DBF3, and
the mesh shown in Fig. 10 was obtained. Comparing it with
the blank from the one-step method design, the outline's
biggest difference is not more than 20 mm.
Fig. 8. The setting of the draw-bead.

4. Conclusions
This paper studied the application of the one-step method
to the blank design of sheet metal forming. For different
depth square box drawing, we compared the result from
the one-step method was compared with the result from
DYNAFORM software, the comparison showing that the
design is reasonable. The study on the Transit car backwheel hubcap also showed that it is possible to apply other
industrial art conditions to one-step method design. Thus, in
the opinion of the authors, the one-step method is a new
method to design blank of sheet metal forming and it will
take a place in the foreground of the blank design eld.

Fig. 9. The influence of the blank size of the setting of the draw-bead.

Acknowledgements
The work reported in this paper is supported by the Ford
China R&D project.

References

Fig. 10. Mesh from MTLFRM.

pre-condition that the blank does not fracture, the resistance

force must be enhanced as much as is possible. Although
under all or the settings of draw-bead shown in Table 1,
the blank will not be fractured, when the condition is set
Table 1
The different resistance force of the draw-bead
No.
DBF1
DBF2
DBF3
DBF4

50
60
70
80

100
120
140
160

50
60
70
80

100
120
140
160

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