Deep Drawing of Rectangular Pans from Aluminum Alloy 2008-T4

Deep drawing experiments using rectangular pans, made of aluminum alloys, have been conducted at the Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing (ERC/NSM) at the Ohio State University. A 160 ton Minster hydraulic press was used for the experiments. A 3-D finite element code called PAM-STAMP was used in the simulations. The current study investigates the effect of blank holder force control and blank shape on the final product quality. In the hydraulic press, it was possible to control the blank holding force (BHF) as a function of time. By conducting experiments and simulations using three blank shapes and various BHF profiles, it has been shown that blank shape and the BHF have significant effect on the formability of aluminum alloy pans, and they must be optimized to eliminate wrinkling and fracture. A decreasing BHF profile was shown to be effective in improving part quality and practical for use in industrial applications.