Introduction

Sheet metal forming is one of the most widely used manufacturing processes for the fabrication of a wide range of products in many industries. The reason behind sheet metal forming gaining a lot of attention in modern technology is due to the ease with which metal may be formed into useful shapes by plastic deformation processes in which the volume and mass of the metal are conserved and metal is displaced from one location to another. Deep drawing is one of the extensively used sheet metal forming processes in the industries to have mass production of cup shaped components in a very short time. In deep drawing, a flat blank of sheet metal is shaped by the action of a punch forcing the metal into a die cavity. Deep drawing products in modern industries usually have a complicated shape, so these have to undergo several successive operations to obtain a final desired shape.

1. Work piece material / Blank 2. Tooling 3. Interface 4. Deformation zone 5. Equipment 6. Part 7. Environment

In todays industry applications, Finite Element Method (FEM) is commonly used in order to simulate different processes based on different FE analyses. In Volvo Cars Corporation particularly, the metal forming process and the crash process, among others, are regularly simulated to lower costs in an early construction phase and to evaluate real physical processes in a later construction phase.

The metal forming FE analysis is used to simulate production of car components and to develop the corresponding dies. Usually, the physical process involves many iterative steps, but the final result could be seen only during and after the prototype production. Using forming simulations,

these steps can be done in a faster and cheaper way.

Literature Review

STRETCHING: The material is expanded in both directions. This mode of deformation is found mostly on smooth bottoms of shallow parts and in hydroforming processes.

DRAWING: This mode is typical the material flow from the flange towards the inner part of the die.

BENDING/UNBENDING: This is a cyclic deformation (most often associated with plane strain). It is found on the die entry line as well as in drawbeads.

STRETCH-AND-BEND: This mode is associated to flanging operations for which the bending line is concave.

COMPRESSION-AND-BEND: This mode is associated to flanging operations for which the bending line is convex.