Abel Cherouat

Determination of Residual Stress in Composite Laminates Using the Incremental Hole-drilling Method:

The cooling conditions used in the forming process of composite materials play an important role in the creation ofresidual stress. In this study, a new method for measuring residual stress in composite laminates is presented. Three cooling conditions were used to produce different residual stress levels. Residual stresses in [02/902]s and [08] laminate have been measured by the incremental holedrilling method combined with 3-D finite element modelling. A software which quickly calculates all the coefficients for each increment was developed. The automatic procedure can be used to calculate the calibration coefficient for any type oflaminate (ply number, mechanic characteristics,...) and whatever the number of increments and their depths. The different results show that this method provides access to the in-depth distribution and through thickness ofresidual stress in the laminate with a good accuracy and practicality.

Influence of experimental parameters on determination of residual stress using the incremental hole-drilling method

Abstract The incremental hole-drilling method is an effective semi-destructive technique for determining the profile and magnitude of residual stresses in composite laminates. This method provides access to the residual stress profile of the intra and inter plies in the through thickness of the laminate. Correct application of the method requires optimisation of the relevant experimental parameters. Tests were performed to investigate the influence of two experimental parameters—the depth of each drilled increment and the influence of the relative position of the strain gages compared with the radius of the hole drilled. The development of a rapid automatic method for numerical calculation of the calibration coefficients enhanced the interest of the method while extending the experimental data range being investigated. The results clearly show that these parameters have an appreciable effect on determination of the residual stress gradient, and especially the magnitude and stability of the residual stress.

Numerical Prediction of Ductile Damage in Metal Forming Processes Including Thermal Effects

The paper is dedicated to the study of the multiphysical coupling in metal forming. Attention is paid to the coupling between thermal exchange, small strain elasticity, finite plasticity with nonlinear hardening, ductile damage, and contact with friction. The standard framework of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes with state variables is used to derive fully coupled thermo-elastoplastic constitutive equations accounting for mixed nonlinear hardening and ductile damage. The related numerical aspects concerning both the local integration scheme of the constitutive equations, as well as the global resolution strategies of the associated Initial and Boundary Value Problem (IBVP) are shortly discussed. For the local integration, an asymptotic iterative scheme is used together with a reduction in the number of the integrated constitutive equations. This model is implemented into ABAQUS/Std using the Umat and Umatht user subroutines. A special care is given to the exact calculation of the consistent stiffness matrix required by the Newton-Raphson implicit resolution strategy of the coupled mechanical and thermal IBVPs. Applications are made to simple examples and the interactions between hardening plasticity, ductile damage, and thermal fields are carefully analyzed.

Present State of the Art of Composite Fabric Forming: Geometrical and Mechanical Approaches

Continuous fibre reinforced composites are now firmly established engineering materials for the manufacture of components in the automotive and aerospace industries. In this respect, composite fabrics provide flexibility in the design manufacture. The ability to define the ply shapes and material orientation has allowed engineers to optimize the composite properties of the parts. The formulation of new numerical models for the simulation of the composite forming processes must allow for reduction in the delay in manufacturing and an optimization of costs in an integrated design approach. We propose two approaches to simulate the deformation of woven fabrics: geometrical and mechanical approaches.

Treatment of the composite fabric's shaping using a Lagrangian formulation

In this paper, we are interested in the simulation of prepreg composite deformation by deep-drawing and laying-up. It uses new bi-component finite elements made of woven material in which the nodal interior loads are deduced from fibre tensile strain energy and not polymerized resin membrane energy. Specific treatment is used to analyze the frictional-contact problem between the deformable prepreg composite and the steel rigid tools. The frictional-contact method is based on the Lagrangian formulation and the preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Some numerical tests are given to investigate the performance of the numerical strategies.

Comparison between an advanced numerical simulation of sheet incremental forming using adaptive remeshing and experimental results

Recently, new sheet metal forming technique, incremental forming has been introduced. It is based on using a single spherical tool, which is moved along CNC controlled tool path. During the incremental forming process, the sheet blank is fixed in sheet holder. The tool follows a certain tool path and progressively deforms the sheet. Nowadays, numerical simulations of metal forming are widely used by industry to predict the geometry of the part, stresses and strain during the forming process. Because incremental forming is a dieless process, it is perfectly suited for prototyping and small volume production [1, 2]. On the other hand, this process is very slow and therefore it can only be used when a slow series production is required. As the sheet incremental forming process is an emerging process which has a high industrial interest, scientific efforts are required in order to optimize the process and to increase the knowledge of this process through experimental studies and the development of accurate simulation models. In this paper, a comparison between numerical simulation and experimental results is realized in order to assess the suitability of the numerical model. The experimental investigation is realized using a three-axis CNC milling machine. The forming tool consists in a cylindrical rotating punch with a hemispherical head. A subroutine has been developed to describe the tool path from CAM procedure. A numerical model has been developed to simulate the sheet incremental forming process. The finite element code Abaqus explicit has been used. The simulation of the incremental forming process stays a complex task and the computation time is often prohibitive for many reasons. During this simulation, the blank is deformed by a sequence of small increments that requires many numerical increments to be performed. Moreover, the size of the tool diameter is generally very small compared to the size of the metal sheet and thus the contact zone between the tool and the sheet is limited. As the tool deforms almost every part of the sheet, small elements are required everywhere in the sheet resulting in a very high computation time. In this paper, an adaptive remeshing method has been used to simulate the incremental forming process. This strategy, based on adaptive refinement and coarsening procedures avoids having an initially fine mesh, resulting in an enormous computing time. Experiments have been carried out using aluminum alloy sheets. The final geometrical shape and the thickness profile have been measured and compared with the numerical results. These measurements have allowed validating the proposed numerical model. References [1] M. Yamashita, M. Grotoh, S.-Y. Atsumi, Numerical simulation of incremental forming of sheet metal, J. Processing Technology, No. 199 (2008), p. 163 172. [2] C. Henrard, A.M. Hbraken, A. Szekeres, J.R. Duflou, S. He, P. Van Houtte, Comparison of FEM Simulations for the Incremental Forming Process, Advanced Materials Research, 6-8 (2005), p. 533-542.

Advanced numerical simulation of metal forming processes using adaptive remeshing procedure

This paper presents an advanced numerical methodology which aims to improve virtually any metal forming processes. It is based on elastoplastic constitutive equations accounting for non-linear mixed isotropic and kinematic hardening “strongly” coupled with isotropic ductile damage. During simulation of metal forming processes, where large plastic deformations with ductile damage occur, severe mesh distorsion takes place after a finite number of incremental steps. Hence an automatic mesh generation with remeshing capabilities is essential to carry out the finite element analysis. Besides, when damage is taken into account a kill element procedure is needed to eliminate the fully damaged elements in order to simulate the growth of macroscopic cracks. The necessary steps to remesh a damaged structure in finite element simulation of forming processes including damage occurrence (initiation and growth) are given. An important part of this procedure is constituted by geometrical and physical error estimates. The meshing and remeshing procedures are automatic and are implemented in a computational finite element analysis package (ABAQUS/Explicit solver using the Vumat user subroutine). Some numerical results are presented to show the capability of the proposed procedure to predict the damage initiation and growth during the metal forming processes.

Experimental and Numerical Studies of Welded Tubes Formability

This paper presents a numerical methodology which aims to improve 3D welded tube hydroforming formability. This methodology is based on elastoplastic constitutive equations accounting for non-linear anisotropic hardening. The experimental study is dedicated to the identification of material parameters (the parent and the heat-affected zones) using the global measure response of tube displacement, thickness evolution and internal pressure expansion. Applications are made to study numerically the effect of the anisotropic parameters, the hardening flow and the heat-affected zone shape on the hydro-formability of welded tubes.

Influence of residual stresses on the mechanical behavior of composite laminate materials

Residual stresses occur during most manufacturing processes (from shrinkage of the resin, difference of thermal expansion coefficients, etc.). Residual stresses may cause local yielding and damage initiation and propagation, and can severely affect performances of a composite structure component. The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of residual stresses on the mechanical behavior of carbon/epoxy cross-ply laminates under tensile and torsion loading. The residual stresses field was determined using the incremental blind-hole drilling technique combined with the finite element analysis. The effect of various cure cycles on the residual stress level is analysed. The quantitative effect of the residual stresses on the mechanical behaviour and the damage initiation and growth is studied by using acoustic emission technique.

Adaptive Refinement procedure For Sheet metal Forming

In the numerical simulation of the forming process, we need to consider the adaptive meshing problem for a domain that has a moving tool boundary contact, damaged element, and finite deformations. During the simulation, the region ahead of the tool moving boundary needs to be refined (to satisfy stronger numerical conditions and tool shape), and the submesh in the region behind the moving boundary contact should be coarsened (to reduce the mesh size). We present a new scheme for simultaneously refining and coarsening a mesh during deep‐drawing process.