Effect of material scatter on the plastic behavior and stretchability in sheet metal forming

•Numerical and experimental study on the influence of material scatter in forming.•Full stochastic material behavior of 41 coils of sheet metal material is determined.•Combining mechanical testing and texture analysis for efficient constitutive modeling.•Scattering material properties highly effect the stretchability of a cup forming process.•Experimental scatter is reproduced accurately by the proposed numerical approach. Robust design of forming processes is gaining attention throughout the industry. To analyze the robustness of a sheet metal forming process using finite element (FE) simulations, an accurate input in terms of parameter scatter is required. This paper presents a pragmatic, accurate and economic approach for measuring and modeling one of the main inputs, i.e. material properties and its associated scattering. For the purpose of this research, samples of 41 coils of a forming steel DX54D+Z (EN 10327:2004) from multiple casts have been collected. Fully determining the stochastic material behavior to the required accuracy for modeling in FE simulations would require many mechanical experiments. Instead, the present work combines mechanical testing and texture analysis to limit the required effort. Moreover, use is made of the correlations between the material parameters to efficiently model the material property scatter for use in the numerical robustness analysis. The proposed approach is validated by the forming of a series of cup products using the collected material. The observed experimental scatter can be reproduced efficiently using FE simulations, demonstrating the potential of the modeling approach and robustness analysis in general.