A new design guideline development strategy for aluminium alloy corners formed through cold and hot stamping processes

In recent sheet metal forming research, efforts have been largely focused on determining optimum processing parameters, while intuitive guidelines to efficiently develop feasible component geometries are rarely considered. Consequently, there are currently no suitable design support tools that can guide component designers using the most recent, and therefore unfamiliar, sheet metal manufacturing technologies. This paper aims to address this bottleneck by proposing a strategy for the creation of early stage manufacturing design guidelines for the common limiting design requirement of deep corners. Aluminium alloys formed under both cold, and elevated temperature working conditions are considered. A new methodology to simplify the analysis of complex viscoplastic behaviour of aluminium alloys at elevated temperatures into an equivalent strain hardening response is presented. The effects and trends of the deep corner geometry and simplified material hardening characteristics on the post-form thinning distribution are identified. New equation sets are proposed which model the identified trends and enable the development of intuitive design maps. Following the approach proposed in this paper, an awareness of the available design envelope can be created at the early stages of a design process to guide component design, material, and manufacturing process selection decisions.