Comparison of different forming methods on deep drawing and springback behavior of high-strength aluminum alloys

Abstract

High-strength aluminum alloys of the 7XXX series have a high potential for safety and crash-relevant components due to their advantageous density-to-strength ratio. Currently, the use of these alloys is limited because of the low formability at room temperature. By using thermal supported forming strategies, failure-free deep drawing is possible for these materials. At present, several thermal-assisted forming processes exist, but so far there is no comparison between these forming operations. For this purpose, this study compares the deep drawing behavior of the alloy AA7075 by using different thermally-assisted forming operations. Aim of this work is to enhance the understanding and comparability between different thermally-assisted forming processes for high-strength aluminum alloys. First, a thermal simulator is used to investigate the mechanical material behavior according to different temperature-time curves by using uniaxial tensile tests. Subsequently, the formability and springback behavior is determined numerically and experimentally in a model test. Finally, for one thermally assisted forming method, the experiments are scaled up to a real size process with drawbeads to validate the transferability. This study can help to improve the scientific knowledge for the use of these materials in future.