Electromagnetic forming of aluminium alloy sheet

A numerical method for modeling the high rate deformation and impact that occurs during the electromagnetic forming process is presented with supporting experimental data, used to validate the predictions. The numerical model employs “loose" two-way coupling of the electromagnetic analysis with the elastic-plastic structural analysis. An electromagnetic finite element code is used to model the time varying currents that are discharged through the coil in order to obtain the transient magnetic forces that are imparted to the workpiece. The body forces generated by electromagnetic induction are then used as the loading condition to model the high rate deformation of the workpiece using an explicit dynamic finite element code. A series of high rate electromagnetic forming experiments are performed on 1 and 1.6 mm AA5754 and 1 mm AA5182 aluminum alloy sheet. The experiments consider free forming, while also serving as a basis to validate the predictive capability of the numerical models. The experiments exhibited high rate formability limits that were similar to conventional quasistatic forming limits. The numerical model accurately predicted the final geometry of the samples as well as the measured strain distributions