Contribution of Strain Hardening Law Coupled to Damage and Remeshing Procedure in the Localization of Plastic Instabilities Application to Hydroforming Processes

Abstract

In this study, we present an experimental/numerical methodology, which aims to improve 3D thin sheet hydroforming considering coupled constitutive equations formulated in the framework of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes accounting for isotropic hardening as well as isotropic ductile damage. The experimental study is dedicated to the identification of stress-strain flow from the global measure of pole displacement, thickness evolution, and internal pressure expansion. During the hydroforming processes severe mesh distortion of element occurs and an automatic remeshing generation is essential to carry out the FEA. Some examples are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology.

Keywords:

• hydroforming
• plastic instability
• remeshing
• experimental tests
• FEM