DOI 10.1007/s00170-006-0659-3
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Received: 9 February 2006 / Accepted: 9 May 2006 / Published online: 26 August 2006
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006
Abstract The effects of process parameters on the formability of the deep drawing of rectangular cups made of
SUS304 stainless steel were investigated by both the finite
element analysis method and the experimental approach. A
statistical analysis was employed to construct an orthogonal
chart which reflects the effects of the process parameters
and their interactions on the formability of rectangular cup
drawing. The material properties and the forming limit
diagram (FLD) of SUS304 stainless steel were obtained
from the experiments conducted in the present study and
were employed by the finite element simulations. In the
finite element analysis, the strain path that led to fracture in
the drawing process was examined and the failure modes
caused by different process parameters were also identified.
With the help of statistical analysis, a formability index for
the deep drawing of SUS304 stainless steel rectangular
cups was constructed and the critical value of the
formability index was determined from the finite element
simulation results. The actual drawing processes of rectangular cups were also performed in the present study. The
validity of the finite element simulations and the formability index were confirmed by the good agreement between
the simulation results and the experimental data. The
formability index proposed in the present study provides a
convenient design rule for the deep drawing of SUS304
stainless steel rectangular cups.
Keywords Rectangular cup drawing . Process parameters .
Finite element analysis . Statistical analysis . Formability
index
F.-K. Chen (*) : S.-Y. Lin
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
e-mail: fkchen@ntu.edu.tw
1 Introduction
Recently, deeply drawn rectangular cups have been widely
applied to the electronics industry, such as for lithium
battery cases. Different materials have been selected for the
applications. Among them, stainless steel is most often used
due to its superior corrosion resistance property, though the
formability of stainless steel is not so preferable to other
metals. Although the geometry of a rectangular cup is
simple, the material flow pattern during the drawing
process is quite complicated. There are many process
parameters that may affect the material flow in the
rectangular cup drawing, such as material properties and
the geometry of the sheet blank, punch radius and die
corner radius etc. For some deeply drawn cups, more than
one drawing process to produce the parts may be needed.
Hence, in the process design of a rectangular cup with
given dimensions, a formability index which can predict
whether the cup can be successfully formed by one single
drawing process is always desired.
A lot of research effort has been made to investigate the
deep drawing of rectangular cups. Kuwabara et al. [1]
examined the effects of the cup geometries on the
formability of the deep drawing of square cups. They
analysed the failure modes and suggested an optimum
design to prevent to drawn cup from fracture. Mori and
Marumo [2] investigated the material flow pattern in the
square cup drawing process with different lubrication
conditions and cup geometries. Danckert [3] performed
different experiments to measure the strain distribution in a
square cup drawing process. Since the finite element
method was widely applied to the analysis of metal-forming
processes in 1980s [4], the material flow in the forming
process could be predicted easily from computer simulations. Chung et al. [5] analysed the effect of planar
1200
879
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
true strain
Fig. 1 Stressstrain relation for SUS 304 stainless steel
78 mm in diameter. The specimens were first electrochemically etched with circular grids that would be deformed
into ellipses after being stretched. The engineering strains
measured in the major and minor axes of the ellipse are
termed the major strain and minor strain, respectively.
They are also the principal strains on the planes where the
strains are measured. The major and minor strains measured
in the location closest to the fracture for each specimen
were recorded and were then plotted against one another
with the major strain as the ordinate. The curve fitted to the
strain points was defined as the forming limit curve, also
termed the failure curve. Considering the safety factor for
the design purpose, a 10% off-set downward of the failure
curve is adopted as the design curve. For the finite element
simulation purpose, the engineering major and minor
strains were converted to true major and minor strains,
and both the failure curve and the design curve are plotted
in Fig. 2. The design curve was used as the failure criterion
for the prediction of the occurrence of fracture in the finite
element analysis.
880
1.2
major strain
1
0.8
Failure Curve
0.6
0.4
Design Curve
0.2
0
-0.3
-0.2
-0.1
0.1
0.2
minor strain
and the major process parameters that affect the formability
the most were identified. The process parameters analysed
in the present study include punch radius (Rp), die radius
(Rd), die corner radius (Rc), die gap (c) and the length-towidth ratio (a/b), as shown in Fig. 4. One process parameter
was analysed at a time while the other process parameters
remained the same. In each simulation, the rectangular cup
was drawn to the presence of fracture according to the FLD
constructed in the previous experiments, and the drawn
depth (H) was used as the index for comparison. In
addition, the low-level and high-level values of each
process parameter to be used in the statistical analysis were
also determined from the finite element analysis. Based on
both the statistical analysis and the finite element simulation results, a formability index was proposed for the deep
drawing of rectangular cups made of SUS304 stainless
steel.
The relationships between the punch radius and the
drawn depth obtained from the finite element simulations
are shown in Fig. 5, with the punch radius and drawn depth
being normalised by the sheet thickness (t). As expected, a
smaller punch radius induces an early fracture and results in
a smaller drawn depth. The low-level and high-level values
of 3t and 15t, respectively, were chosen for the statistical
analysis according to Fig. 5. To examine the failure mode,
the major strain and minor strain paths tracing the fracture
points in the drawing process using punches with radii of
2.01 mm and 8.04 mm are shown in Fig. 6a,b, respectively.
It is seen in both figures that the fracture of the sheet is due
to biaxial stretching, since both the major and minor strains
are positive. It is also noted in both figures that both the
881
35
30
H/t (mm/mm)
25
20
15
10
0
0
10
12
14
16
Rp/t (mm/mm)
1.5
major strain
1.2
0.9
Rp=2. 01
0.6
Rp=8. 04
rupture point
0.3
0.0
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
time (sec)
(a) major-strain path
0.30
0.25
minor strain
0.20
Rp=2. 01
Rp=8. 04 mm
rupture point
0.15
0.10
0.0 5
0.00
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
time (sec)
(b) minor-strain path
4.0
5.0
882
H/t (mm/mm)
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
0
10
12
14
16
Rd/t (mm/mm)
Fig. 7 Relation between die radius (Rd) and drawing depth (H)
Fig. 9a, b Location of fracture points for different die corner radii
(Rc). aRc=0.5 mm. bRc=8 mm
0.34
31
H/t (mm/mm)
H/b (mm/mm)
0.32
0.3
0.28
0.26
30
29
28
27
26
25
0.24
24
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
R c/b (mm/mm)
Fig. 8 Relation between die corner radius (Rc) and drawn depth (H)
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
c/t (mm/mm)
Fig. 10 Relation between die gap (c) and drawn depth (H)
1.7
883
H/b (mm/mm)
0. 8
0. 7
0. 6
0. 5
0
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
a/b (mm/mm)
4 Statistical analysis
Low
High
a/b
Rc/b
Rp/t
Rd/t
c/t
1
3
0.05
0.18
3
15
3
12
1.05
1.5
H
0:4515 0:0044A 0:1059B 0:3006C
b
0:0333D 0:0137E0:0528AB . . .
0:0006ABC . . . 0:0051ABCD . . .
0:0046ABCDE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
: low level
+: high level
884
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
Rc/b
to be =2, =1 and =0.25, and the proposed formability index has the form:
s
t
H2
K4
3
Rp Rc b
16
K from Rp/b
Rc/b <0.1
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0
R p /t
10
12
14
5 Experimental validations
In order to validate the finite element analysis and the
proposed formability index, six sets of tooling were manufactured to conduct the rectangular cup drawing tests. The
dimensions of the tooling geometries were selected to be the
same as those adopted in the finite element simulations and
within the range between the low-level and high-level values
sets for the statistical analysis. The punches used in the
drawing tests are shown in Fig. 14. The SUS304 stainless
steel sheets, of 0.61 mm and 0.72 mm in thickness, were cut
to the designed blank sizes and lubricated with oil for the
885
886
Fig. 16a, b Major and minor strains measured from experiments and simulations. a Major strain. b Minor strain
0.8
thickness (mm)
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
simulation
experiment
0.2
0.1
0.0
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
70.0
887
data were also employed to validate the proposed formability index. The maximum drawn depth, the sheet
thickness and the associated tooling dimensions of each
drawing process were substituted into Eq. 3 to calculate the
K value. The experimental K values are plotted in Fig. 18
with Rp/t as the abscissa. It is seen in Fig. 18 that all of the
K values are within the range from 1.1 to 2.1, which are
close to those predicted by the finite element simulations
but with a smaller maximum value of K. It indicates that the
formability index given by Eq. 3 is a valid form and the
critical K value can be set conservatively as 2.0 for the deep
drawing of SUS304 stainless steel rectangular cups. The
experimental results confirm the validity of both the finite
element simulations and the statistical analysis.
6 Concluding remarks
The experimental results have validated the finite element
simulations performed for the deep drawing of rectangular
cups made of SUS304 stainless steel and have also
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
0
Rp/t
a/ b=1 ,Rc/b=0.1 ,Rp/t=8.2,Rd/t=8.2,c/t=1.31,t=0.61
a/b=1,Rc/b=0.1,R p/t=6.94,Rd/t =6. 94,c/ t=1.11, t=0.72
a/ b=1 ,Rc/b=0.2 ,Rp/t=8.2,Rd/t=8.2,c/t=1.31,t=0.61
a/b=1,Rc/b=0.2,R p/t=6.94,Rd/t =6. 94,c/ t=1.11, t=0.72
a/ b=1 ,Rc/b=0.2 ,Rp/t=4.1,Rd/t=8.2,c/t=1.31,t=0.61
a/b=1,Rc/b=0.2,R p/t=3.47,Rd/t =6. 94,c/ t=1.11, t=0.72
a/ b=2 ,Rc/b=0.2 ,Rp/t=8.2,Rd/t=8.2,c/t=1.31,t=0.61
Fig. 18 K values calculated from Eq. 3 using experimental data
888
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