Hydromechanical deep-drawing of aluminium-alloys at elevated temperatures

This paper presents a technology that combines the different effects used in hydromechanical and warm deep drawing to reduce the drawing force and to increase the transmittable drawing force in the deep drawing process of aluminium sheets by flange heating and by using a counter pressure. Adequate process parameters and an optimised tool design are discussed in thermo-mechanically coupled Finite Element Simulations, The required system parameters, such as temperature and strain rate dependent flow curves, temperature dependent friction coefficients and heat transfer coefficients, were detected in different model experiments for the numerical simulations. Experimental results are presented to highlight the possibilities and limitations of this forming method.