Investigation and comparative analysis of plastic instability criteria: application to forming limit diagrams

The prediction of forming limit diagrams (FLDs) is of significant interest to the sheet metal forming industry. Although a large variety of plastic instability criteria have been developed during the previous decades, there is still a lack of comparison of their respective theoretical bases. The aim of this paper is to present the theoretical formulations of a representative selection of diffuse necking and strain localization criteria based on the maximum force principle, the Marciniak-KuczyAski method and the bifurcation approach. The theoretical foundations and underlying assumptions for each criterion are specified prior to their application to several materials to determine the associated FLDs. The capability of the criteria to predict the formability of thin metal sheets is discussed and a classification of some of the criteria is attempted according to their order of occurrence in terms of the localization prediction.