The Effect of Stamping Data on the Palm Printing Analysis of an Automotive Fender

External components of an automotive body are manufactured from a stamping of sheet metal plane resulting in a final product with variable thickness due to different levels of stretch and a heterogeneous distribution of residual plastic strain. Generally, these informations are not considered in numerical simulations of the product and may cause considerable errors in the analysis of stamped parts involving nonlinearities. This work aimed to simulate an event called palm-printing in an automobile fender, with and without the consideration of the final data of the numerical simulation of the stamping process (final thickness and residual plastic strain) and the results compared with those obtained experimentally. Results showed that the consideration of thickness and hardening from the stamping process can improve the correlation of final results in quasi-static nonlinear analysis. However, the results showed that the influence of the thickness reduction is so important as the hardening, especially in the correlation of the reaction force of the indenter, contrary to reports in the literature in cases of crash test simulation.