Experimental and numerical investigations of sheet AA6082 formability and B-pillar forming under HFQ conditions

Assessing and predicting formability of a material have significant importance for forming process design and optimisation. In this paper, formability of AA6082 under various conditions were investigated through biaxial tensile tests, and the results were used for calibrating a set of constitutive equations based on continuum damage mechanics (CDM). Forming tests that replicate industrial forming conditions were conducted to explore the effects of HFQ conditions on the formability of the AA6082 aluminium sheet. In these tests, B-pillar components of a commercial vehicle were produced under different conditions, followed by ARGUS measurements to capture the formed geometry and strain distributions. The CDM-based constitutive equations were implemented into FE model to simulate the forming processes, and the simulation results were compared with experimental data to validate the model. It was found that lower forming speed and higher temperature lead to higher formability of the material and are beneficial to the quality of the formed components. Numerical simulations successfully predicted the strain distribution and defects formed during forming and showed good agreements the experimental results from the B-pillar forming tests, indicating that the CDM-based model can be successfully applied in practical forming processes for designing and optimising the process parameters.