Advanced Wear Simulation in Sheet Metal Forming

H. Hoffmann1(2), C. Hwang2, K. Ersoyl

Institute of Metal Forming and Casting, Technische Universitat Munchen, Garching, Germany
2
INZl Controls Co. Ltd., Shihung-Shi, Republic of Korea

Abstract
A drawback of former wear simulation of deep drawing processes is that the change of wear caused by
increasing the number of punch strokes was not considered. Geometry-Update-Scheme (GUS) which has
been proposed at Institute of Metal Forming and Casting considers the changes of tool geometry caused by
wear through interactive iterations of forming and wear simulation. The wear depth from simulation using GUS
shows maximal 0.07 mm of difference from the measurement at a section of worn die-geometry. In this study,
only the abrasive wear was considered.
Keywords:
Deep drawing, Simulation, Wear

1 INTRODUCTION
"Wear is defined as the progressive damage and material
loss, which occurs on the surface of a component as a
result of its motion relative to the adjacent working parts
[I]." The advent of many high-strength steels makes the
need of prediction of tool wear higher. The wear of the
draw-die is one of the important problems in the production
of sheet metal. Based on the finite element analysis,
several researches have been carried out to estimate
wear.
Jensen et al. applied the finite element method for the
determinations of tool wear in the conventional deep
drawing process and optimized the draw-die geometry [2,
31. Eriksen and Jensen et al. used the simplified Archard's
equation to calculate the elemental tool wear for the deep
drawing process by the two-dimensional finite element
analysis [2, 3, 41. Also, the results from the studies showed
a good agreement with real tool wear qualitatively.
Habig mentioned that wear is a function of production time
or sliding distance [5]. The simplified Archard's equation
has no term for this characteristic of wear. However it can
be modified to take the wear coefficient as a function of
time.
Oqvist did wear simulations using updated geometry with
different step size approaches [6]. His study showed that
the algorithm of updated geometry could bring more
accurate worn geometry of tools.
In this study, by gathering these previous works, an explicit
simulation scheme has been suggested to get reasonable
results quantitatively. The time-dependent wear behavior
mentioned by Habig is implemented to the calculation of
wear for finite elements considering geometry update. The
combination of the classical methods like from Jensen and
the updated geometry scheme contributes the accurate
prediction of the tool life cycle. PAM-STAMP0 was used to
perform the 3D simulation of the deep drawing process.
2

THEORY AND ALGORITHM

2.1 Classical wear equation for finite elements

The Archard (or Rabinowicz) wear equation is widely used
for the coupling with the simulation of sheet metal forming
as shown in equation (I), which asserts that the wear
volume W is directly proportional to the product of the load
P on the contact and the sliding distance L but inversely

proportional to the surface hardness H of the wearing

material. In equation (1) K is a material constant.

In order to bring the common wear equation to the

elemental equation, finite element discretization is
necessary [2]. The wear volume change of an element w
at a certain time t is expressed by the normal pressure on
the elemental surfacep and the elemental sliding velocity v
shown in equation (2).

The wear volume of unit area W, is obtained by integrating

equation (2) by time.

wu= - j P

vdt

(3)

H ,
By introducing the wear work Z in equation (4), the unit
wear volume is expressed as equation (5).

=S

pdt

(4)

K
w,=-z
H
The wear coefficient and the material hardness depend on
the selection of material.
2.2 Classical simulation scheme
Based on the wear equation for finite elements, the wear
simulation is carried out followed by the algorithm as
shown in Figure 1:

X Coordinate [mm]

'
Worn tool geometry

-E
-E -2
a,
+

Figure 1: Algorithm of a classical wear simulation

K
._

The main contribution of the classical wear simulation is to

find out some critical areas of abrasion like Figure 2. The
qualitative wear from the simulation is compared with
experiments referred to [2].

-3

>
-4

No. of punch strokes

-10000
..... 30000
40000
- -50000

-5

Tool material: GG25, sheet: DCOI

Stroke: 55 mm
Blank holding pressure: 30 MPa
Wear coefficient of the tool: 5 . 2 3 ~0-7
1 [7]
Figure 4: Calculated wear distribution by classical method
at die-radius for the strip test

(a) Experiment
(b) Simulation
Figure 2: Wear distribution at the draw-die of a 2D axial
symmetric deep drawing process
A more practical example is shown in Figure 3. The wear
simulation of tools for B-pillar reinforcement from
DaimlerChrysler AG has been carried out using a classical
method. The qualitative wear distribution shows a good
agreement with the actual case according to the
experience of experts in the industry.

Source: DaimlerChrysler AG
Figure 3: Wear on the tool for B-Pillar reinforcement
For the prediction of wear quantities the classical method
is not suitable because it does not consider the changes of
the tool geometry by wear.
Figure 4 shows the worn geometry at the die-radius by a
strip-test. The wear of tool geometry depends on the
number of punch strokes proportionally. However wear
propagates by the increase of the number of punch strokes
in practice. The reason is that the contact area between
the tool and the workpiece is changed slightly by wear.

2.3 Geometry-Update-Scheme (GUS)

To consider the changes of tool geometry by the increase
of the number of punch strokes, Geometry-UpdateScheme (GUS) has been developed.
In order to describe the change of tool geometry GUS uses
an iterative scheme as shown in Figure 5. Each iteration is
composed of forming and wear simulation. The tool
geometry calculated by wear simulation is used as input
geometry of forming simulation in the next iteration.

Figure 5: Schematic description of GUS

A wear simulation tool REDSY is developed to implement
GUS. REDSY imports the results of forming simulation,
calculates ekmental wear, and exports the worn geometry
to a file for the next iteration. The procedure of GUS is
shown in Figure 6.

Initial tool geometry

Updated tool gc metry

Sheet Material

DC04 I m m

Blank holding force

160 kN

Friction coefficient (Tool)

Punch stroke

0.1
45 mm

Wear coefficient (Tool)

5.89 x 10-5/cycle

Hardness (Tool)
No. of punch strokes

90 MPa

200 strokes (parts)

Table 1: Data for simulation

I

I Worn tool geometry I

Figure 6: Algorithm of GUS
Figure 7 shows the difference of worn geometry of the dieradius between the classical method and GUS. Referring
to the experimental results of Frank [7] for the strip test,
the approximated radius of worn tool has a good
agreement with his experiment. The approximated radius
by GUS is 5.4 mm and the measured radius by Frank is
5.5 mm. In the case using the classical method the
approximated radius is 7.8 mm. Frank mentioned only the
measured radius in his research work. For this reason
there is no experimentally measured radius profile show in
the figure. Because the approximated radius by GUS
shows more reasonable value than by the classical
method, the radius profiles from calculation are compared
to show the differences of both methods. The purpose of
this comparison is to prove the reasonability of GUS.

Die shoulder radius : 15 mm Tool material:

Punch radius : 15 mm
Zinc 94%, Al: 3%, Cp:3%
(a) Die

X Coordinate [mm]

5
150

(b) Blank sheet

Figure 8: Model geometry (1/4 Model)

-E -1
E

al -2

m
.-S

eg

-3

No. of punch strokes: 50000

>
-4

-5
Tool material: GG25, sheet: DCOI
Stroke: 55 mm
Blank holding pressure: 30 MPa
wear coefficient of the tool: 5 . 2 3 ~ 1 0 [7]
.~
Figure 7: Comparison of the radius profile from the wear
simulation after 50000 strokes in strip test
3 APPLICATION
The simulation and experiment of a rectangular cup
drawing process was performed to verify GUS. Tool
geometry was measured by GOM-ATOS@ system after
200 punch strokes. Using PAM-STAMP@ and REDSY with

Figure 9 shows the wear distribution by GUS and the

classical method. The wear distribution of Section A is
compared with measurement in Figure 10. The maximal
difference of wear depth between experiment and the
classical method is about 0.2 mm on the plane part of the
draw-die. In the case of GUS the sliding velocity and
pressure between the blank sheet and the draw-die
becomes decreased in the next iteration because the
contact surface is changed by geometry-update. For this
reason it is more reasonable to consider the change of tool
geometry. The maximum difference of the wear depth is
about 0.07 mm at the end of the die shoulder radius.
4 CONCLUSION
An advance simulation scheme has been proposed to
consider the geometry changes caused by tool wear. The
approach using Geometry-Update-Scheme (GUS) shows a
good agreement with the experimental data. GUS may be
used in the prediction of the life cycle of a tool in sheet
metal forming and the optimal design of the tool geometry
regarding the minimization of wear.

6 REFERENCES
[ I ] J.A. Williams, 1999, Wear modelling: analytical
computational and mapping: a continuum mechanics
approach, Wear, 225-229, 1-17.
[2] M.R. Jensen, F.F. Damborg, K.B. Nielsen, J.
Danckert, 1998, Applying the finite-element method
for determination of tool wear in conventional deepdrawing, J. Mat. Proc. Technol., 83, 98-105.
[3] M.R. Jensen, F.F. Damborg, K.B. Nielsen, J.
Danckert, 1998, Optimization of the draw-die design
in conventional deep-drawing in order to minimise
tool wear, J. Mat. Proc. Technol., 83, 106-114.

[4]
[5]
[6]
(a) Classical method
[7]

Section A

Wear depth
[unit: mm]
~

0.05

0.2

0.35
0.5

(b) GUS
Figure 9: Wear distribution at the draw-die after 200 punch
strokes

Figure 10: Section profile (Section A)

5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to Europaische Forschungsgesellschaft fur Blechverarbeitung e.V. (EFB e.V.) for its
support under Grant AiF 12646N of the Program,
" Uberg reife nde 0ptimier ung i n de r BIec hteiIefe rtig ung" .

M. Eriksen, 1997, The influence of die geometry on

tool wear in deep drawing, Wear, 207, 10-15.
K.H. Habig, 1980, Verschlein und Harte von
Werkstoffen, Hanser, 49-54.
M. Oqvist, 2001, Numerical simulations of mild wear
using updated geometry with different step size
approaches, Wear, 249, 6-1 1.
C. Frank, 1999, Kunststoff als Werkzeugwerkstoff fur
das Tiefziehen von Feinblechen, Dissertation,
Universitat Hannover, Figure 32, Table 3, Table 4,
Table 5.