Effect of elevated temperatures on the drawability of aluminium sheet components

The process limits of aluminium sheet drawing processes can be improved by manipulating local flow behaviour by means of elevated temperatures and temperature gradients in the tooling. An experimental study showed that a substantial improvement is possible not only for 5000 but also for 6000 series alloys. Hardness measurements and tensile tests on high temperature prestrained samples indicated that warm drawn parts properties can significantly differ from cold drawn parts A FEM process simulation was used to investigate the temperature distribution and evolution before and during deep drawing of a cup. The materials model and friction coefficients used were based on tensile test data and friction tests. The calculated and measured effect of warm drawing on the wall thickness profile agreed reasonably well