Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791

Finite element simulation of springback in sheet metal forming

Luc Papeleux, Jean-Philippe Ponthot*
LTAS-Milieux Continus et Thermomécanique, Université de Liège, 1, Chemin des Chevreuils, B-4000 Liège-1, Belgium
Received 20 December 2001; received in revised form 24 February 2002; accepted 24 February 2002

Abstract

Although finite element analysis (FEA) is successful in simulating complex industrial sheet forming operations, the accurate and reliable
application of this technique to springback has not been widely demonstrated. Several physical parameters, as well as numerical, influence this
phenomenon and its numerical prediction. In this paper, we investigate the impact of these parameters on the springback appearing in a 2D U-
draw bending.
# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Springback; Sheet metal forming; Kinematic hardening; Finite element

1. Introduction in Sections 5–8, numerical experimentation will be carried

Springback describes the change in shape of a formed
sheet upon removal from the tooling. It is more severe for
materials with higher strength-to-modulus ratios (e.g., alu-
minum and high strength steel (HSS)). The finite element
analysis (FEA) of springback is shown to be very sensitive to
many numerical parameters, including the number of
through-thickness integration points, type of element, mesh
size, angle of contact per element on die shoulder, possible
inertia effects and contact algorithm. Moreover, springback
is also sensitive to many physical parameters including
material properties, hardening laws, coefficient of friction,
blankholder force (BHF) and possible unloading procedure.
All that makes springback simulation very cumbersome. A
challenging benchmark, named the U-draw bending was
presented at the NUMISHEET’93 Conference [3] where a
collection of numerical, as well as experimental results can
be found. This benchmark will be analyzed here in details.
The structure of the paper is the following. In Section 2,
we will describe the benchmark. In Section 3, we will
introduce how we actually perform the simulation. Then,
in Section 4, we will show that, under the benchmark
conditions (given material parameters, friction coefficient,
BHF, etc.), our numerical results are bracketed by the
experimental ones and that they are consistent with numer-
ical results obtained by the commercial code OPTRIS. Then,
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ32-4366-9310; fax: þ32-4366-9141.
E-mail addresses: l.papeleux@ulg.ac.be (L. Papeleux),
jp.ponthot@ulg.ac.be (J.-P. Ponthot).
out under various combinations of numerical and physical
factors in order to determine how they influence the process.
2. Benchmark description
Let us start with a description of the benchmark we will
study throughout this paper, namely the U-draw bending
presented at the NUMISHEET’93 Conference [3]. It is very
useful for our study since, on the one hand, it is very sensitive
to many parameters from both the experimental and the
numerical point of view and, on the other hand, springback
can be quantified by three simple geometric measurements.
The schematic drawing of the U-draw bending is shown in
Fig. 1. The three geometric quantities that quantify spring-
back are shown in Fig. 2. These consist of two angles y1 and
y2 and the radius r.
The main hypothesis used throughout this simulation are
the following:

Element type: 2D linear shell element.

Time integration scheme: Chung–Hulbert dynamic impli-
cit [1].

Springback simulation: complete tool removal including
contact interactions.

Contact algorithm: penalty method on analytically
defined rigid bodies.
Further details about the shell element used can be found
in [8,7] and further details about METAFOR, the software
used here can be found in [6]. Result of simulations will be

0924-0136/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 3 9 3 - X
786 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791

Fig. 1. Schematic U-draw bending process.

Fig. 3. Punching phase.

Fig. 2. Description of the three quantities y1, y2 and r to quantify

springback. r is the radius of the circle defined by A, B and C.

Table 1
Elastic, thickness and frictional properties for U-draw bending test

Mild steel HSS Aluminum

Young’s modulus 206000 206000 71000

Poisson’s ratio 0.3 0.3 0.33
Thickness (mm) 0.78 0.74 0.81
Frictional coefficient 0.144 0.129 0.162

Table 2
Isotropic hardening properties

Material Hardening law

Mild steel 157:1281ð1 þ 140:5086epl Þ0:2589 Fig. 4. End of punching phase.

pl 0:2182
HSS 265:45ð1 þ 80e Þ
Aluminum 132:23ð1 þ 60:31epl Þ0:3593

shown for the three following materials: mild steel, HSS and
aluminum. Materials properties are given in Tables 1 and 2.

3. Simulation process

In the simulations performed, special attention is given in

order to remain as close as possible to the physical process.
Using an implicit dynamic time integration scheme, we are
able to simulate the whole process including both the
loading and the unloading phases with the same time Fig. 5. Punch withdrawal.
 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791
Fig. 6. After complete punch withdrawal.
Fig. 7. Blankholder withdrawal.
Fig. 8. After complete blankholder withdrawal.
integration algorithm and with a frictional contact algorithm
active all along the process.
The whole process is described in Figs. 3–10. In these
figures, the arrows represent the contact forces. The length
of the arrow is proportional to the magnitude of the contact
Fig. 9. Specimen ejection—note the contact forces.
787
Fig. 10. Final geometry—note the contact forces.
Fig. 11. Comparison of the final geometries for the different materials.
force. In these figures, it is clearly seen that contact forces do
exist during the unloading phase. Fig. 11 shows the final
geometries, after complete unloading for the three different
materials used.
The simulation usually cannot be performed in the same
way using commercial codes where the tendency is to use two
different algorithms. Indeed, an explicit algorithm is generally
used for the loading phase, including the contact interactions
while an implicit algorithm, without any contact capabilities
is used to simulate the unloading phase, see e.g. [2,4].
4. Results according to the material
Results of these simulations with elastoplastic isotropic
material and isotropic hardening are described in Figs. 12–14
Fig. 12. Parameter Y1 vs material.
788 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791
Fig. 13. Parameter Y2 vs material.
Fig. 14. Parameter r vs material.
for the three materials. Result obtained with our code META-
FOR [6] are compared to experimental data (Min, Max and
mean value) [3] and simulation data obtained using the
commercial code OPTRIS [5]. All these results show that
our numerical results are consistent with the results from
OPTRIS and are bracketed by the Min and Max values from
the experimental data.
5. Sensitivity to the BHF
We will now study the influence of several physical and
numerical parameters on springback. The first of those is the
BHF. It is experimentally observed that the springback
Fig. 15. Parameter Y1 vs BHF.
Fig. 16. Parameter Y2 vs BHF.
Fig. 17. Parameter r vs BHF.
increases with small forces, but decreases as the force
increases for large force values. The same phenomenon is
found in the FE simulation using mild steel as shown in
Figs. 15–17. The curves exhibit an extremum for some
values of the BHF and one can also find a BHF value where
the considered springback parameter almost vanishes.
This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that with
low BHF, the punch induces mostly bending stresses in the
material, but as the blankholder holds the blank more
severely, the stresses induced by the punching phase become
mostly tensile stresses.
6. Sensitivity to the coefficient of friction
Friction is an important but not very well known factor
influencing springback. Its modeling is difficult because this
coefficient is probably different on the curved and flat parts of
both the die and punch. Moreover, it is very difficult to
measure those coefficients experimentally. So, we have cho-
sen to use the same coefficient on all parts of all the tools and
study the results obtained for different values. Figs. 18–20
show that the same evolution as for BHF is observed: spring-
back curves also exhibit an extremum (we used mild steel for
this case). It is also important to note that the values of the
parameters for low coefficient of friction are significantly
different than the values for mean (i.e. m ¼ 0:15) friction
coefficients. That makes friction a very sensitive parameter.
 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791 789

physically correct nor enables us to measure the springback

obtained since the blank would have no static final shape. We
could have used a scheme containing artificial damping but
this does not represents what physically happens. Further-
more, people using the vanishing tools method generally use
those kind of mixed schemes. We did not use a quasi-static
scheme for the blankholder removal phase because in such a
case we need to constrain a degree of freedom vertically in
order to prevent a rigid body movement from making the
iterative process diverge and this would have prevented us
from modeling all the springback effects correctly. We have
used three kinds of explicit schemes:
Fig. 18. Parameter Y1 vs friction coefficient.

the classical central difference scheme;

a scheme where we have scaled up the mass in order to
artificially increase the maximum time step allowed by a
factor 10 (density has been multiplied by 100);

a scheme where the punch speed is 10 times larger so that
the total forming time has been divided by 10.
Figs. 21–23 show the values obtained for the springback
parameters while using different schemes. In these figures,
the minimum and maximum values of the experimental
results are also represented.
As can be seen from the figures, results are slightly
different whether we use implicit or explicit scheme, but
they are still in the range of the experimentally obtained
values. The main difference is in the CPU cost, as shown in
Fig. 19. Parameter Y2 vs friction coefficient.

Fig. 21. Parameter Y1 obtained with various integration schemes.

Fig. 20. Parameter r vs friction coefficient.

7. Influence of the time integration algorithm

Until now, we have used the dynamic implicit Chung–

Hulbert [1] scheme in every case we have studied. We are
now going to show why we did so and why being able to deal
with contact using implicit schemes is so important. For this
purpose, we used an explicit scheme for the punching phase,
an implicit dynamic one for the punch removal and for the
blankholder removal and a quasi-static implicit scheme for
the ejection phase. We did not use an explicit scheme for the
whole process because we would have obtained undamped
vibrations of the upper part of the blank after ejection and
those vibrations would never be damped out, which is not Fig. 22. Parameter Y2 obtained with various integration schemes.
790 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791

Fig. 25. Parameter y1 vs b.

Fig. 23. Parameter r obtained with various integration schemes.

Fig. 26. Parameter y2 vs b.

Fig. 24. Relative CPU costs for different integration schemes.

Fig. 24. The explicit scheme without mass scaling requires
more than 60 times more CPU than its implicit counterpart.
With a 10 times larger time step, the implicit scheme is still
six times faster. That is why we chose this scheme to make
all the other tests.
8. Sensitivity to the constitutive parameters
In the previous section simulations were performed using
isotropic plastic criterion and isotropic hardening.
As the sheet is bent and unbent in the U-draw bending, we
assume that Bauschinger effect must have some influence on
springback. To emphasize this, the mild steel simulation has
been performed once again but this time with a mixed
hardening law. As the correct parameters for kinematic
hardening are not known, plastic limit stress curve (given
by a tension test) is split between Von Mises yield stress
evolution ðsv ðepl ÞÞ and an equivalent back stress evolution
ðaðepl ÞÞ through a user defined parameter b
represent the minimum, maximum and average value of the
experimental results.
It is obvious that complete kinematic hardening ðb ¼ 0Þ
does not provide accurate results. A minimum of b ¼ 0:3 is
required for the springback parameters to be in the range of
experimental data. Furthermore, the angle y1 is less sensitive
to kinematic hardening than the other springback para-
meters, because the region defining angle y1 is only bent
once during the process and Bauschinger effect only appears
on successive plastic loading in tension-compression. The
sensitivity of y2 and r to b is higher since it corresponds to a
structural region where bending and unbending occur.
Finally, it is worth noting that the last two results fit the
mean experimental value for a value close to b ¼ 0:8.

sv ¼ s0v þ bðspl ðepl Þ  s0v Þ (1)

pl
a ¼ ð1  bÞðspl ðe Þ  s0v Þ (2)

Simulations have been performed from the complete iso-

tropic hardening model ðb ¼ 1Þ to the complete kinematic
model ðb ¼ 0Þ. The results are displayed in Figs. 25–27. In
these figures, three horizontal lines have been drawn. They Fig. 27. Parameter r vs b.
 L. Papeleux, J.-P. Ponthot / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 125–126 (2002) 785–791
A last simulation has been performed using this time an
anisotropic plastic criterion. Using the Hill 48 plastic criter-
ion with a mean R value (in plane isotropy) given by
R0 þ 2R45 þ R90
R¼ ¼ 1:77
4 [2] S.W. Lee, D.Y. Yang, An assessment of numerical parameters
Once again, numerical results fall in the range of experi-
mental data (Figs. 25–27).
9. Conclusions
In this paper, a classical benchmark in springback pre-
diction was described and the results obtained were com-
pared with experimental data. A simulation method
describing the tools action during the whole process was
introduced and compared with the classical vanishing tools
approximation. The influence on springback of several
parameters such as BHF, friction, spatial integration, time
integration scheme and constitutive laws describing the
material used were studied in details.
Acknowledgements
The support of the Walloon Region, under grant number
9713609 is gratefully acknowledged.
791
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