Development of an analytical model for warm deep drawing of aluminum alloys

In this study, an analytical model was developed to investigate the effects of material, process, and geometric parameters in the warm forming of aluminum alloys under simple cylindrical deep drawing conditions. The model was validated with both existing experimental findings in the literature and FEA results. The effects of the main process parameters (i.e., temperature, forming rate, blank holder pressure (BHP), and friction between a blank and a tooling element) on formability were studied under a variety of warm forming conditions. The developed model offers rapid, useful, and reasonably accurate results for the design of warm forming process by predicting the deformation mechanism of the material and the relationships between limiting drawing ratio (LDR) and process parameters in isothermal and non-isothermal heating conditions. It was demonstrated that significant formability improvement could be achieved when a large temperature gradient was realized between die and punch, while a slight decrease of LDR was observed when tooling elements and a blank were heated up to same temperature levels. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.