Journal of Materials Processing Technology 172 (2006) 451460

Numerical modelling and experimental validation of steel deep drawing processes Part I. Material characterization
Claudio Garc a a , Diego Celentano a, , Fernando Flores b , Jean-Philippe Ponthot c
a

Departamento de Ingenier a Mec anica, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Avda. Bdo. OHiggins 3363, Santiago de Chile, Chile b Departamento de Estructuras, Universidad Nacional de C ordoba, Casilla de Correo 916, 5000 C ordoba, Argentina c LTAS-Milieux Continus et Thermom ecanique, Universit e de Li` ege, 1 Chemin des Chevreuils, B-4000 Li` ege-1, Belgium Received 9 August 2004; accepted 8 November 2005

Abstract This work presents an experimental characterization of the mechanical behaviour of the EK4 deep drawing steel. The experimental procedure encompasses spectrometry, metalography, tension testing and hardness measurements. Special attention is devoted to the derivation of the elastic and plastic parameters involved in the assumed constitutive model based on the anisotropic Hill-48 yield criterion. The simulation of the deformation process during the whole tensile test is subsequently performed with the aim of assessing the adequateness of the proposed methodology. It should be mentioned that the material parameters obtained with this procedure are the basic data for the modelling and experimental validation of different deep drawing applications presented in Part II of this work. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Forming process; Deep drawing; Material characterization

1. Introduction A relevant aspect that has to be considered in the analysis of any forming process is the knowledge of the mechanical behaviour of the materials involved in it. This is particularly difcult in metal sheet deep drawing operations due to the different complex mechanisms (nite strain plasticity, hardening, damage, viscous effects, etc.) that develop in the blank material during its deformation. Therefore, an adequate material characterization is a crucial task that needs to be carried out in order to design, control and/or eventually optimize the production of a prescribed component. The manufacturing of steel sheets by means of press-working represents a large industry that produces numerous parts for a wide variety of applications. Specically, the steel commercially known as EK4 is nowadays extensively used in many deep drawing operations (see, for instance [1]). Some particular features

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: claudio.garcia@usach.cl (C. Garc a), dcelenta@lauca.usach.cl (D. Celentano), fores@efn.uncor.edu (F. Flores), JP.Ponthot@ulg.ac.be (J.-P. Ponthot). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2005.11.015

of it are specied in [2]: maximum admissible values for carbon and nitrogen contents, ultimate tensile strength (UTS), yield strength and hardness and, in addition, a minimum bound for the fracture elongation. However, it is a well-known fact that the nal properties of the material under the EK4 denomination are not a world-wide standard since rolled sheets provided by various steel companies may behave completely different when being deformed. This drawback denitely restricts the exibility of the process since usually expensive trial and error calibration tests are required to tune the appropriate operation parameters. The aim of this work is to present an experimental characterization of the mechanical behaviour of a specic EK4 deep drawing steel broadly employed in the industry [1]. Spectrometry, qualitative metalographic observations, tensile testing and hardness measurements are undertaken to this end. In particular, the tensile tests have been conducted according to the standard specications [36] using specimens oriented at 0, 45 and 90 with respect to the sheet rolling direction. The experimentally derived elastic and plastic parameters are the basic data for the constitutive model adopted to describe the material response during the deformation process. A hyperelastic elastoplastic law written in terms of Hencky stress and strain measures is considered [7]. Strain hardening and normal anisotropy (along the

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sheet thickness) effects are both considered via the Hill-48 associate plasticity model [8]. Afterwards, this model is used in the simulation of the material behaviour during the whole test via a large strain shell formulation discretized within the nite element context. Finally, the numerical results are validated with the experimental measurements. 2. Material constitutive model The constitutive model adopted in this work to describe the sheet material behaviour is briey presented below. More details about this model can be found in [7], and references therein. 2.1. Strain and stress measures The so-called Hencky deformation tensor is chosen here as the main kinematic state variable since it is an objective (Lagrangian) strain measure and constitutes, in addition, a natural extension of the unidimensional logarithmic strain. Considering the sheet as a thin shell with a curvilinear local coordinate system over its middle surface, this deformation is dened as: e = LT ln()L (1)

Hill-48 yield criterion is a useful framework to simulate sheet responses subjected to deep drawing operations [8]. Although the further assumption of planar isotropy (or normal anisotropy) appreciably simplies the formulation, this situation was found to be approximately fullled in many applications (see e.g. [1012]). In this context, the yield function written in terms of the Cauchy stress tensor (that can be derived from T through a proper kinematic transformation; see Section 4.1) under the plane stress condition (i.e. 33 = 13 = 23 = 0) reads:
2 2 + 22 F = 11

) 2 2R 2(1 + 2R 11 22 + (Cp )2 = 0 1+R 1 + R 12 (3)

is the average Lankfords coefcient accounting for the where R non-isotropic plastic behaviour along the shell thickness and Cp is the isotropic hardening function given by: Cp = Ap ( e0 + e p)
p np

(4)

p is the effecwhere Ap and np are the hardening parameters, e p tive plastic deformation and e 0 is an assumed initial value such e0 ) , with y being the yield strength dening the that y = Ap ( material initial elastic domain. The effective plastic deformation p = 2/3 e p : e p with the following evorate is computed as e p lution equation for e : p = e F (5)
p np

where and L, respectively, include the eigenvalues and the associated eigenvectors of the right stretch tensor U such that U2 = FT F, F being the deformation gradient tensor (T is the transpose symbol). Note that the strain related to the sheet thickness variation is simply e3 = ln(t/t0 ), where t/t0 is the thickness ratio between the deformed and initial congurations. The other two eigenvalues dene the principal (in-plane) stretches in the shell surface. Consistently, the Hencky stress tensor T, whose expression is given in Section 2.2, is used in this context. 2.2. Stressstrain law A linear hyperelastic stressstrain law expressed in terms of Hencky measures is considered to describe the material behaviour: T = C : (e ep ) (2)

is the rate (or increment in this framework) of the plaswhere tic consistency parameter calculated according to the standard procedures of the plasticity theory [13]. The yield strength together with the hardening parameters and average Lankfords coefcient are all derived, as described in Section 3, from the experimental data measured during tensile tests applied to the EK4 steel.
3. Experimental procedure
The experimental procedure adopted in this work to characterize the mechanical behaviour of the EK4 steel consisted in the following steps.

where C is the isotropic elastic constitutive tensor corresponding to the plane stress condition and ep is the plastic contribution of e. As can be seen, an additive elasticplastic decomposition of the Hencky strain is assumed based in the fact that the elastic deformations are usually small in many steel deep drawing processes. The evolution law of ep is given below. 2.3. Plastic behaviour It has been long recognized that the use of the associate rateindependent plasticity theory including the classical anisotropic
Table 1 Average chemical composition of EK4 steel (% in weight) C (%) 0.0457 Ni (%) 0.0114 Mn (%) 0.1936 Al (%) 0.0049

3.1. Chemical composition

This routine task aimed at checking the adequate composition of the selected material is carried out by means of an optical spectrometer. The average chemical composition of the EK4 steel is shown in Table 1. It is seen that the carbon content present in this material is less than 0.08% which is the maximum bound typically required for this kind of deep drawing steels [2].

3.2. Metalography
Metalographic observations in the sheet plane and thickness for the undeformed material are, respectively, shown in Figs. 1 and 2. A ferritic matrix with

P (%) 0.0093 Cu (%) 0.0302

S (%) 0.0045 Co (%) 0.0080

Cr (%) 0.0375 Fe (%) 99.58

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Fig. 1. Metalography of EK4 steel in the sheet plane.

Fig. 2. Metalography of EK4 steel in the sheet thickness.

uniformly distributed equiaxial grains can be appreciated in both planes precluding in this way the presence of any grain alignment.

3.3. Tensile test

The geometric conguration of the EK4 steel sheet sample to be tested according to the standard specications [3,4] is sketched in Fig. 3. The distance between the two markers denotes the initial extensometer length taken as 50 mm in this case. The respective initial values for the width and thickness in the work-

ing zone are w0 = 12.5 mm and t0 = 0.6 mm. The specimens have been cut along three different orientations (0, 45 and 90 ) with respect to the rolling direction of the sheet during its manufacturing process. A nearly gradual reduction in width is considered in order to trigger the necking development that has to take place approximately at the middle of the extensometer length. This tapered prole ts the usual standards since the difference between the adopted maximum and minimum width values existing in the extensometer length is lower than 1% [3,4]. The average engineering stressstrain curves obtained with 18 samples (six for each orientation) considering a load cell of 2.5 mm/min are plotted in Fig. 4.

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C. Garc a et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 172 (2006) 451460 Table 2 Parameters obtained from the tensile test applied to EK4 steel samples Youngs modulus (GPa) Average Range () Fig. 3. Tensile specimen (dimensions (mm)). Table 3 Average original and nal dimensions of EK4 steel tensile samples Original Width (mm) Thickness (mm) Extensometer length (mm) Transversal area (mm2 ) 12.5 0.600 50.0 7.50 Final 7.67 0.397 72.3 3.05 Ratio (nal/original) 0.61 0.66 1.44 0.41 212 6.80 Yield strength (MPa) 183 2.80 Maximum load (kN) 2.168 0.030 UTS (MPa) 285 3.00 Fracture elongation (%) 46.7 4.1

Fig. 4. Average engineering stressstrain curves of EK4 steel for specimens oriented at 0, 45 and 90 with respect to the rolling direction.

The material uniformity was reected in the remarkably low dispersion found in the measurements for each orientation. As usual, the engineering stress is dened as P/A0 , where P is the axial load and A0 = w0 t0 is the initial transversal area, while the engineering strain or elongation is computed as (L L0 )/L0 , with L and L0 being the current and initial extensometer lengths, respectively. At the beginning of the deformation process, the material behaves elastically. Once the yield strength is reached, a plastic deformation without hardening develops within the elongation range of 0.481%. This response, usually known as L uders band formation [14], is a typical phenomenon observed for low carbon steels whose negative effect on the drawing properties has been limited in this case by means of a cold rolling applied to the material during its manufacturing process. Then, the plastic hardening starts and the load increases up to a maximum value

that takes place in a wide elongation plateau (from 25 to 35%, approximately). For higher levels of elongation, as it is well-known, the load decreases since the effect of the reduction of the transversal area at the necking zone is stronger than that of the hardening mechanism. As can be observed in Fig. 5, a highly localised (ductile) necking develops until the rupture of the specimen that occurs at a elongation of about 47%. The average experimentally measured values (considering the three orientations) for the Youngs modulus, yield strength, maximum load, ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and elongation at the fracture stage are summarized in Table 2. It is seen that these values t the admissible bounds usually considered for the EK4 steel [2], i.e. maximum yield strength of 210 MPa, UTS ranging from 270 to 350 MPa and minimum fracture elongation of 38%. Moreover, some average original and nal characteristic dimensions of the sample are presented in Table 3. The experimental characterization of the plastic behaviour that is subsequently accomplished is mainly aimed at deriving the hardening parameters Ap involved in the constitutive and np and the average Lankfords coefcient R model described above. Details of the methodology followed to obtain such constants are given below. Since the engineering stressstrain relationship cannot provide a proper description of the hardening material response during the whole tension process, an alternative stressstrain curve dened in terms of an equivalent stress eq and an equivalent strain eq is used to this end [5]. According to the procedure

Fig. 5. Geometric congurations of the sample: (a) necking zone and (b) rupture.

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Fig. 6. Mean equivalent stress vs. equivalent deformation. originally proposed by Bridgman [15], these variables can be, respectively, computed as eq = fB P/A and eq = eq /E + p , where fB (p ) 1 is an assumed known correction factor (i.e. the conditions fB = 1 and fB < 1, respectively, account for the uniaxial and triaxial stress distributions that occur before and after the necking formation) applied to the mean true axial stress P/A, A is the current transversal area at the necking zone (A = wt , where w and t are the current width and thickness, respectively), E is the Youngs modulus and p = ln(A0 /A) is the true (logarithmic) deformation. As can be seen, w and t are the additional variables to be measured. It should be mentioned that the correction factor fB has been exclusively obtained for isotropic materials tested in specimens that only develop diffuse necking (e.g. either cylindrical or strip samples with a relatively high t0 /w0 ratio [16]). Therefore, this methodology cannot be straightforwardly applied to the present case. However, a simplied procedure can be adopted. It basically consists in plotting a eq eq curve with the available experimental data within the deformation range that exhibits uniaxial stress distribution (035% for this material), i.e. prior to the onset of necking where the condition fB = 1 holds. Although this simpler approach is not strictly valid for the whole deformation range up to rupture, it ensures a reasonably accurate material characterization. Fig. 6 shows the experimental data (corresponding to 10 specimens) for the eq eq relationship together with the potential correlation derived from them via the application of a classical least-squares technique to Eq. (4). The resulting hardening parameters are: Ap = 566 MPa and np = 0.345. The measurement of the average Lankfords coefcient accounting for the normal anisotropy of the sheet has been performed according to the standard specications [6]. The recommended expression to compute this parameter, dened as the ratio between the width and thickness deformations for sheets specimens oriented at 0, 45 and 90 with respect to the rolling direction, is R0,45,90 = ln(w/w0 )/ln(l0 w0 /lw) which, as can be seen, assumes the incompressible nature of the plastic ow. In order to minimize the experimental errors associated with the measurement of the sample dimensions, the adequate use of this equation is restricted to the elongation range corresponding to the development of uniaxial stress with hardening, i.e. around 1025% in this case. The = 1/4(R0 + 2R45 + R90 ). The average Lankfords coefcient is given by R assumption of planar isotropy can be assessed by the so-called earing index dened as R = 1/4(R0 2R45 + R90 ). The Lankfords coefcient together with the earing index for the EK4 steel are summarized in Table 4. As can be that makes it approappreciated, this steel presents a relatively high value of R priate for deep drawing applications. Moreover, the small value of R found for this steel indicates that it exhibits a low planar anisotropy and, therefore, Table 4 Lankfords coefcients and earing index of EK4 steel R0 Average Range () 1.62 0.13 R45 1.50 0.06 R90 2.00 0.12 R 1.65 R 0.16

Fig. 7. Engineering stressstrain curves for different load cell velocities V (specimens oriented at 0 with respect to the rolling direction). this fact justies the use of a simplied yield crietrion as that presented in Section 2.3. The inuence of strain rate effects on the mechanical behaviour of the EK4 steel has been evaluated by measuring the variation of both the yield strength and UTS when performing tensile test at different load cell velocities. The corresponding results are shown in Fig. 7 and Table 5. Although a noticeable strain rate dependency can be observed on the yield strength, the maximum difference in the plastic responses (given for instance by the UTS values) is around 10%. This relatively small difference allows the application of the hardening parameters obtained above under low load cell velocities to other deformation stiuations undergoing higher strain rates (e.g. a reasonable bound within which many real p < 0.1 s1 [1012,14]). applications t is e A photographic tracking of the necking formation that develops at high levels of tensile elongation is sketched in Fig. 8 with the sake of qualitatively characterizing the fracture of this material. The necking evolution starts with two symmetric diffuse shear bands that progressively become more localised as the elongation increases. The severe thickness reduction that mainly takes place at the center of the sample causes a sudden initiation of a crack that immediately propagates in an unstable form along only one shear band that can be visually detected as a narrow groove inclined around 68 with respect to the axial direction of the specimen. It is seen that the grid drawn on the sample distorts until the very instant of crack propagation since from that time onwards the further deformation is completely conned to the shear band where, as noted in [16], the plane stress condition is no longer valid.

3.4. Hardness test

The objective of the hardness measurements carried out in this work is twofold: rst, to check the suitableness of the hardness value found for the EK4 steel considered here and, second, to verify the well-known relationship stating the direct proportion between hardness values and strain hardening effects expressed by the variable Cp (see Eq. (4)). The hardness Rockwell unit in the scale 30T (HR30T) is used in the measurements done to original and deformed samples. Table 6 summarizes these results. It is appreciated that the average hardness value found for the original sample ts the standard requirements (according to [2], the corresponding maximum value is 50). Moreover, higher hardness values are Table 5 Average parameters of EK4 steel obtained at different load cell velocities Load cell velocity (mm/min) 2.5 100 250 300 400 Yield strength (MPa) 183 220 232 236 243 UTS (MPa) 285 309 312 314 316

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Fig. 8. Necking formation evolution for different levels of elongation (magnication: 30).

Table 6 Hardness values of EK4 steel measured in the HR30T scale Original sample Deformed sample

Zone 1 Average Range () 38.5 1.3 39.3 0.7

Zone 2 53.8 1.8

Zone 3 52.5 2.9

Zone 4 48.4 3.6

Zone 5 51.1 3.2

Zone 6 51.7 2.8

Zone 7 40.4 3.6

C. Garc a et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 172 (2006) 451460 observed in those zones that experienced larger strain hardening effects ratifying the validity of the above mentioned relationship.

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4. Numerical simulation of the tensile test The performance of the adopted constitutive model including the material parameters obtained via the experimental characterization described above are both assessed in the simulation of the mechanical response during the tensile test of EK4 steel sheet samples. Some relevant features of the discretized formulation used in the analysis are concisely given below. A full description of it can be found in [7,9]. 4.1. Principle of virtual work The Hencky strainstress pair eT described in Section 2 can be easily transformed to the usual Green-Lagrange strain E and second PiolaKirchhoff stress S. These last conjugated tensors present, as it is well-known, some practical advantages when solving the equilibrium equation through the principle of virtual work whose expression is [17]:
0

Fig. 9. Basic shell triangle (BST): element patch denition.

Table 7 Material properties of EK4 steel used in the simulations Youngs modulus (E) Poissons ratio (v) Yield strength (Cth ) Hardening parameter (Ap ) Hardening exponent (np ) ) Average Lankfords coefcient (R 212 GPa 0.32 183 MPa 566 MPa 0.345 1.65

ET S d0 =

uT B0 d0 +

uT t 0 d0

(6)

where 0 is the material conguration of a body subjected to a body force B0 and a traction force t0 on its boundary 0 and u is the displacement vector eld. The mentioned strainstress transformations are, respectively, given by [7]: E= and S = LT S L L with 1 being the the unity tensor and [S L ] = [S L ] 1 LT TL 2 2 ln( / ) T = L TL 2 (2 ) (8) 1 T 2 L ( 1)L 2 (7)

(9)

Furthermore, the Cauchy stress tensor can be computed as [17]: = 1 FSF T det(F )

4.2. Discretized formulation A simple rotation-free thin (KirchhoffLove) shell triangle is used in the simulation [7]. The basic idea of this discretized formulation is to combine the standard nite element interpolation with nite volume concepts which allows to express the curvatures over a control domain in terms of the displacement gradients along the domain edges. These gradients are in turn written as a function of the deections of the nodes belonging to an element patch surrounding the control domain and this leads

Fig. 10. Finite element mesh used in the simulation (mesh composed of 511 shell elements and 292 nodes).

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to a relationship between curvatures and nodal displacements. This three-node shell triangle termed BST (for basic shell triangle; see Fig. 9) has showed an excellent behaviour for both linear and non-linear analysis of shell structures. Moreover, a very good performance was observed when modelling large strain plasticity responses as those typically found in sheet stamping problems by using, in particular, the hyperelastic material constitutive model described in Section 2. Different aspects related to the accuracy and efciency of this formulation are reported in [7,9].

4.3. Results and discussion Based on the experimental characterization of the EK4 steel described above, the main objective of the present analysis is to validate the predictions of the material constitutive model with the experimental measurements obtained in the tensile test of sheet specimens. The material properties considered in the numerical analysis are shown in Table 7. The spatially non-uniform nite element mesh shown in Fig. 10 has been chosen in order to describe

Fig. 11. Comparison between experimental and numerical results. (a) Engineering stressstrain curve. Results at the section undergoing extreme necking: (b) mean true axial stress vs. true deformation; (c) load vs. true deformation; (d) ratio of current to initial width (mean values along thickness); and (e) ratio of current to initial thickness (mean values along width).

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correctly the large stress and deformation gradients expected in the necking zone. Due to symmetry, only one-fourth of the specimen is studied. Fitting the specications of Fig. 3, the neck in the middle of the specimen is triggered by assuming a very small linear width variation along its length. The axial displacement imposed at the top boundary is denoted as U and it is increased up to a value that corresponds to the fracture elongation (see Table 2). Moreover, four layers have been considered to perform the numerical integration of the constitutive law along the sheet thickness [9]. Fig. 11 shows a comparison between experimental and numerical results for the engineering stressstrain relationship and some variables at the section undergoing extreme necking: the mean true axial stress and load both against the true (logarithmic) deformation and, in addition, the width and thickness ratios versus the elongation. These curves include experimental measurements corresponding to specimens oriented at 0, 45 and 90 with respect to the rolling direction. An overall good agreement between the numerical predictions and the average experimental values can be observed in these curves. The relatively small differences can be considered as approximately bounded within the experimental uncertainty range. The experimentalnumerical discrepancies appearing in the engineering stressstrain curve can be mainly attributed to the inaccuracy of the potential correlation at the beginning of the

plastic region. The experimentally measured load decreases from an elongation of 35% or, equivalently, to a logarithmic deformation of 0.38 onwards. The corresponding deformations provided by the simulation are very similar to these values. As already commented on in Section 3.3, a geometrical instability (instead of a constitutive one) caused by the necking formation occurs since the mean true axial stress continues increasing until the fracture stage. Moreover, note that the well-known simplied condition [14] stating that the related logarithmic deformation at the point of maximum load has to be equal to the hardening exponent is approximately veried in this case. At high levels of deformation, the regions of the specimen outside the necking zone are being elastically unloaded. The numerical predictions for the mean w/w0 and t/t0 ratios match the normal anisotropy condition quantied by the Lankfords coefcient (see Section 3.3). This is apparent at the beginning of the test, where a uniaxial stress is achieved, since the reduction in t/t0 is, as expected, lower than that of w/w0 . In this (t t0 )/t0 is case, the following relationship (w w0 )/w0 R approximately fullled. Once the neck is formed, a reverse trend is found, i.e. a stronger variation in t/t0 is observed such that (t t0 )/t0 . (w w0 )/w0 < R Although the hardening parameters have been experimentally derived within an elongation range upperly bounded by the point for which the load starts decreasing, the reasonably good tting

Fig. 12. Effective plastic deformation contours for an elongation of 43.2%: (a) whole sample and (b) detail at the necking zone.

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of the numerical results to the experimental ones shown in Fig. 11 conrms the validity of the material characterization carried out in Section 2 even beyond such point. The effective plastic deformation contours at a deformation stage close to the rupture of the specimen are sketched in Fig. 12. A non-uniform distribution is clearly obtained due to the complex deformation pattern of the neck. A diffuse shear band development can also be appreciated where its slope nearly coincides with that observed in the experiments (see Section 3.3). It should be mentioned, however, that the constitutive model used in the simulation cannot cope with the modelling of damage and crack propagation effects. 5. Conclusions A detailed experimental characterization of the EK4 deep drawing steel has been presented. In particular, the low dispersion found in the experimental data measured during the tensile test allowed a consistent derivation of some material parameters which, in turn, are involved in a constitutive model that was subsequently used to simulate the material response during such deformation process. The experimental validation of the numerical results has been satisfactory. Hence, the procedure followed to characterize the mechanical behaviour of this material has proved to be a basic and useful tool to undertake a realistic experimentally-based modelling of complex sheet forming processes. Acknowledgements The supports provided by the Chilean Council of Research and Technology CONICYT (FONDECYT Projects No. 1020026 and 7020026) and the Department of Technological and Scientic Research at the University of Santiago de Chile (DICYT-USACH) are gratefully acknowledged. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Aeronautical Technical Academy at Santiago de Chile and the Compa n a TecnoIndustrial (CTI) for the provision of experimental facilities.

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