FEM Analysis of Spring-backs in Age Forming of Aluminum Alloy Plates

The age forming technology, characterized by huge spring-backs, has been developed to manufacture large integral wing-skin panel parts, which necessitates devising a method of predicting spring-backs. A 7B04-T7451 aluminum alloy creep test in tension is accomplished at 155 ℃, and the creep curves are obtained. The material constants of the mechanism-based creep constitutive equations are determined through experiments. The age forming process and the spring-backs of 7B04 aluminum alloy plates are analyzed using the commercial finite element software ABAQUS. The effects of plate thickness and forming time on spring-backs are researched. The spring-backs decrease with the increase of plate thickness and forming time. The test results verify the reliability of the finite element method （FEM） analysis.

Rapid Springback Compensation for Age Forming Based on Quasi Newton Method

Iterative methods based on finite element simulation are effective approaches to design mold shape to compensate springback in sheet metal forming. However, convergence rate of iterative methods is difficult to improve greatly. To increase the springback compensate speed of designing age forming mold, process of calculating springback for a certain mold with finite element method is analyzed. Springback compensation is abstracted as finding a solution for a set of nonlinear functions and a springback compensation algorithm is presented on the basis of quasi Newton method. The accuracy of algorithm is verified by developing an ABAQUS secondary development program with MATLAB. Three rectangular integrated panels of dimensions 710 mmx750 mm integrated panels with intersected ribs of 10 mm are selected to perform case studies. The algorithm is used to compute mold contours for the panels with cylinder, sphere and saddle contours respectively and it takes 57%, 22% and 33% iterations as compared to that of displacement adjustment （DA） method. At the end of iterations, maximum deviations on the three panels are 0.618 4 mm, 0.624 1 mm and 0.342 0 mm that are smaller than the deviations determined by DA method （0.740 8 mm, 0.740 8 mm and 0.713 7 mm respectively）. In following experimental verification, mold contour for another integrated panel with 400 ram^380 mm size is designed by the algorithm. Then the panel is age formed in an autoclave and measured by a three dimensional digital measurement devise. Deviation between measuring results and the panel＇s design contour is less than 1 mm. Finally, the iterations with different mesh sizes （40 mm, 35 mm, 30 mm, 25 mm, 20 mm） in finite element models are compared and found no considerable difference. Another possible compensation method, Broyden-Fletcher-Shanmo method, is also presented based on the solving nonlinear fimctions idea. The Broyden-Fletcher-Shanmo method is employed to compute mold contour for the second panel. It only takes 50% iterations compared to that of DA. The proposed method can serve a faster mold contour compensation method for sheet metal forming.

Advances and challenges on springback control for creep age forming of aluminum alloy

Creep age forming(CAF)is an advanced forming technology that combines creep deformation and age hardening processes.When compared with the conventional forming technologies including roll bending and shot-peen forming,CAF has many advantages of low residual stress,excellent dimensional stability,good service performance and short production cycle.It is an optimal technique for precise manufacturing for shape and properties of large-scale complicated thinwalled components of light-weight and high strength aluminum alloys in the aviation and aerospace industries.Nevertheless,CAF has an inevitable disadvantage that a large amount of springback occurs after unloading,which brings a challenge on the accurate shape forming and property tailoring of components.Therefore,how to achieve accurate prediction and control of springback has always been a bottleneck hindering the development of CAF to more industrial applications.After the factors of affecting springback and measures of reducing springback are summarized from the internal and external aspects,constitutive models for predicting springback and springback compensation methods for CAF of aluminum alloy panel components are reviewed.Then,a review of research progresses on tool design for CAF is presented.Finally,in view of the key issue that it is difficult to predict and control the shape and properties of components during CAF,the technical challenges are discussed and future development trends of CAF are prospected.

Dependence of creep age formability on initial temper of an Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy

The initial temper of the material may directly affect the whole creep age forming （CAF） process. In terms of creep deformation and stress relaxation, using the constant-stress creep aging and constant-strain stress relaxation aging tests, the relationship between initial temper and CAF formability is investigated for an Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy at 165 ℃ for 18 h. Three tempers are selected as the initial tempers in CAF, viz., solution, retrogression and re-solution. The CAF formability of this alloy with initial temper of retrogression is the best, and the creep strain of the retrogression tempered specimen after creep aging of 18 h is about 1.21 and 1.34 times than that of the solution and the re-solution tempered specimens, respectively. The calculated stress exponents of this alloy with three initial tempers range from 7.3 to 9.5, indicating that the CAF of this alloy is mainly controlled by the dislocation creep. The various formability for three initial tempers are attributed to different inhibitions of the transgranular precipitates on the dislocation movement. For the retrogression temper, the initial fine and uniformly distributed precipitates are seriously coarsened after 6 h of CAF, which minimally inhibit the dislocation movement. While, for the re-solution temper, the fine precipitates are re-precipitated in the matrix of the alloy, which observably hinder the dislocation movement and lead to the worst formability.