COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON FORMABILITY ANALYSIS IN METAL FORMING

Sheet metal products are one of the most important semi-finished products used in the steel industry, and metal forming technology is therefore an important engineering domain. The development of new sheet metal forming processes, tooling and so on, has until now, to a large extent been based on experience, rules of thumb and trial- error experiments without or with only little use of scientifically based engineering methods. As mentioned above, experience is not enough, and trial-error experiments are expensive with regard to both money and time. The forming limit diagram (FLD) shows metal formability in metal forming with less cost.. The forming limit diagram typically represents the maximum permissible range of major and minor strains that a typical sheet material can undertake without failure. The forming limit diagram is experimentally measured for each sheet material by placing a grid of circle on the sheet sample and then deforming the same. A comparison of the original and the extensions in the marked grids on the sheet sample provide an estimate of the major and minor strain of the sample. This paper presents a case study of automotive component spring seat. By placing the grid of circles on the component and by measuring the dimensions of deformed circles a forming limit diagram has drawn. The simulations were carried out by fast form advanced software. The results achieved concluded that, safe forming zone is of bottom part and wrinkling tendency is present on side wall of component