FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION OF DEEP DRAWING OF ALUMINIUM ALLOY SHEETS AT ELEVATED TEMPERATURES

More and more automobile companies are going for weight reduction of their vehicles for fuel economy and pollution control. They have started using tailored blanked bodies with advanced joining techniques. Such material combinations usually are called as "Tailor Welded Blanks-TWB" with better characteristics. However, owing to the presence of different materials their formability is a challenge. The objective of the present study is to determine the effect of blank temperature on forming behaviour of sheets and damage factor of such aluminium sheet alloys of 6061 and 7075 at elevated temperatures. An insight into such a study will throw light on the different temperatures required by the above materials when they are made into TWBs. In the present investigation, a series of simulations were carried out on the formability behaviour of cylindrical deep drawing of aluminium alloys in the temperature range 50-500[degrees]C using DEFORM-2D. The damage factor based on Cockcroft Latham algorithm was taken as the constraint for defect free product. The results show that forming at elevated temperature can yield significant increase in product height, especially for aluminium 7075. The deep drawing of aluminium 6061 alloys show very good formability in a temperature range between 150-250[degrees]C and 400-500[degrees]C for aluminium 7075. Both the metals gave identical cup heights when drawn at 475[degrees]C.