Introduction

Sheet metal forming is one of the most widely used manufacturing processes for the fabrication of a wide range of products in many industries. The reason behind sheet metal forming gaining a lot of attention in modern technology is due to the ease with which metal may be formed into useful shapes by plastic deformation processes in which the volume and mass of the metal are conserved and metal is displaced from one location to another. Deep drawing is one of the extensively used sheet metal forming processes in the industries to have mass production of cup shaped components in a very short time. In deep drawing, a flat blank of sheet metal is shaped by the action of a punch forcing the metal into a die cavity. Deep drawing products in modern industries usually have a complicated shape, so these have to undergo several successive operations to obtain a final desired shape.

1. Work piece material / Blank 2. Tooling 3. Interface 4. Deformation zone 5. Equipment 6. Part 7. Environment

In todays industry applications, Finite Element Method (FEM) is commonly used in order to simulate different processes based on different FE analyses. In Volvo Cars Corporation particularly, the metal forming process and the crash process, among others, are regularly simulated to lower costs in an early construction phase and to evaluate real physical processes in a later construction phase.

The metal forming FE analysis is used to simulate production of car components and to develop the corresponding dies. Usually, the physical process involves many iterative steps, but the final result could be seen only during and after the prototype production. Using forming simulations, these steps can be done in a faster and cheaper way.

Literature Review
STRETCHING: The material is expanded in both directions. This mode of deformation is found mostly on smooth bottoms of shallow parts and in hydroforming processes.

DRAWING: This mode is typical the material flow from the flange towards the inner part of the die.

BENDING/UNBENDING: This is a cyclic deformation (most often associated with plane strain). It is found on the die entry line as well as in drawbeads.

STRETCH-AND-BEND: This mode is associated to flanging operations for which the bending line is concave.

COMPRESSION-AND-BEND: This mode is associated to flanging operations for which the bending line is convex.

FACTORS CONTROLLING DEFORMATION

In the following, several factors controlling the stamping operation are analyzed. However, it should be pointed out that a hierarchy exists among the different factors, which is partially echoed by the traditional product development workflow.

In order of importance, we can thus identify: 1. Part geometry 2. Die-face (active tooling surface) geometry 3. Material rheological properties 4. Lubrication and restraining systems

Finite Element Method The Finite Element Method requires that a domain is divided into finite number of elements (a mesh). The elements are connected at points called nodes. When the load is applied on the structure, deformation occurs in the element. It invokes nodal displacement. The nodal displacement is related to the strains and the stresses. FEM calculates the nodal displacement so that the stresses are in equilibrium (approximately) with the applied loads. There are two general schemes for calculating an approximate solution (here, the nodal displacement): explicit and implicit method.

Explicit method If it is possible to find a dependent variable upon known quantities, the computation is said to be explicit. The explicit method has the form: { D } n + 1 = f ( { D } n, { D } n, { D } n, { D } n 1, ... )

where {D} is a displacement vector, and indexes n+1, n, and n-1 refers to the solution of the next, current, and the previous step, respectively. Hence, the solution { D } n + 1 is determined by already known information.

Implicit method There are two methods which are used for the implementation of the springback simulation (static solution, free from dynamic oscillations): The explicit dynamic relaxation and the static implicit method. The second one is preferred. The implicit method evaluates solution upon unknown quantities at the next time step. The implicit method has the form: { D } n + 1 = f ( { D } n + 1 , { D } n + 1, { D } n , ... ) The solution { D } n + 1 requires the knowledge of time derivatives of the solution, which are unknown.

Geometric Nonlinearity Four kinds of formulations have been proposed in the literature for dealing with the motion and deformation of solid bodies. Truesdell named these formulations as material, Eulerian, Lagrangian, and updated-Lagrangian. All the four formulations are, however, equivalent in the case of smooth motion of a deformable body. In finite element analysis of problems of sheet metal forming processes, only the last two formulations have been found useful.

Material Nonlinearity Three types of approaches have been described in the published literature for dealing with problems of material nonlinearitys. These are called deformation theory, solid approach, and flow formulation.