Journal of Materials Processing Technology 187188 (2007) 300303

The study on forming principle in the process of hydro-mechanical

reverse deep drawing with axial pushing force for cylindrical cups
S.D. Zhao , Z.Y. Zhang, Y. Zhang, J.H. Yuan
College of Mechanical Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian 710049, China

Abstract
A novel device of hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing with axial pushing effect for cylindrical cups is proposed. The axial pushing force is
exerted on the brim of the blank by a special part of pushing ring. The fluid pressure supplied for die cavity and axial pushing force can be controlled
separately. Considering the annealing treatment between first stage and second stage, the finite element simulation of the hydro-mechanical reverse
deep drawing process are conducted by DYNAFORM-PC code together with modifying the keywords of *LOAD MASK manually. The effects of
different technology parameters on the forming of deep drawing process are investigated by the method of finite element simulation in conjunction
with experiment verification and the optimal technology parameters are obtained. It was proven that the axial pushing force can improve the
deformation extent of blanks considerably, and is one of the key factors for reverse deep drawing. Experiments with thickness 1 mm and material
08Al (a China drawing steel) were performed using the developed device of hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing with axial pushing force on
the universal hydraulic press, XP-S-500. The experimental results are in good agreement with the numerical simulation results.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Finite element; Multi-stage forming; Hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing; Axial pushing effect; Cylindrical cup; Sheet metal

1. Introduction
Over the last 50 years several innovative cup drawing process have been introduced. One category of these processes
makes use of hydraulic pressure to improve the basic deep drawing process. The researching hotspot among these processes
are hydroforming, hydro-mechanical deep drawing, drawing
against hydraulic counter-pressure, reverse redrawing, and so
on [1].
Considering drawing process for cylindrical cups, the redrawing process is usually applied in order to obtain larger drawing
ratio. The drawing successfully for the cylindrical cup includes
two or more steps in order to improve the formability by preventing the local deformation in cup wall [2]. Conventionally,
the redrawing processes are sorted in two categories: direct
and reverse redrawing. The first one corresponds to a process in which the different punches are always in contact
with the same blank side whereas during reverse redrawing,
the punch travel occurs in two opposite directions and the
outside of the part during the first stage becomes the inside
at the second stage. The advantages of the reverse draw-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 88188209; fax: +86 29 82665204.

E-mail address: sdzhao@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (S.D. Zhao).

0924-0136/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2006.11.198

ing process are a more compact tooling, a better surface

aspect and a smaller number of bendingunbending operations
[3,4].
Buerk proposed a tool for hydro-mechanical reverse drawing in 1967. A seal ring was used without pressure fluid at
the peripheral brim of the blank [5]. Nakamura and co-workers
proposed hydraulic counter-pressure deep drawing assisted by
radial pressure in 1984 [68]. In the drawing of aluminum sheet
of 0.8 mm thickness, very deep shell with a drawing ratio of 3.3
was drawn successfully by supplying a radial pressure of only
25 MPa. In addition, the reverse deep drawing with hydraulic
counter-pressure and radial pushing force was also proposed by
Nakamura and Nakagawa in 1986 [9]. In their experiment of
the drawing test using aluminum sheet of 0.8 mm thickness, a
total drawing ratio of 4.9 was obtained by a combination of 2.1
in mechanical drawing and 2.3 in subsequent reverse drawing
under fluid pressure. Thiruvarudchelvan and Travis [10] reported
their investigation results on redrawing conducted with a tool in
which an independent hydraulic pressure acts as blank holding force, whilst hydraulic pressure to augment the punch force
is controlled separately. Thiruvarudchelvan and Lewis developed a novel redrawing process to redraw cups at a redraw
ratio of 3 [11]. Kim et al. [12] proposed a new method for
hydro-mechanical reverse redrawing assisted by separate radial
pressure.

S.D. Zhao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 187188 (2007) 300303

In this investigation, a novel hydro-mechanical reverse deep

drawing with axial pushing effect tool is proposed in which the
axial pushing pressure and die cavity pressure can be controlled
separately. The axial pushing force is exerted on the workpiece
by a pushing ring. Then finite element simulations and optimization are conducted by DYNAFORM-PC code and experiments
are performed using 08Al circle blanks at 500 tonnes hydraulic
press. A cup with a draw ratio of 2.95 is obtained.
2. Hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process
The hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process with
axial pushing effect for cylindrical cups includes two stages:
forward and reverse drawing. At the second stage, the operation
can be divided into two types by whether the pressure exerting
on the brim of workpiece is independent on the fluid pressure in
die cavity or not. The first type is shown in Fig. 1a, the fluid in
die cavity is compressed with the punch advancing down, and
partial fluid flow to the brim of the blank, then the radial pushing
force is induced. The second type is shown in Fig. 1b, the fluid

301

pressure inducing radial pushing force is independent on the

fluid pressure in die cavity. They can be regulated independently
by corresponding control unit. In this study, the major problem
discussed is the hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process
for cylindrical cup. The fluid pressure supplied as axial pushing
force is independent variable in die cavity, and is amplified by a
pushing ring, as shown in Fig. 1c.
In Fig. 1c, the axial pushing force is exerted on the brim of the
cup by a pushing ring. Thus, the radial tensile stress at the sidewall is reduced and the risk of occurring fracture can be reduced
considerably. In addition, the radial stress increased with friction and bending resistance when the material of the blank flow
through the punchdie profile zone. Then the tangential stress
reduced and the wrinkling is restrained. At the same time, the
loading capacity of the sidewall is enhanced due to strain hardening effect. All the factors mentioned above can improve the
formability of the sheet metal to some extent.
3. Numerical simulation
The simulation of the hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process can be divided into two steps. The first step is to
build the models for the conventional forward drawing operation and for the hydro-mechanical reverse drawing operation.
The various parameters in the first step can be transferred into
next operation by the dynain file of LS-DYNA, in which the
geometry change, thickness distribution and residual stress are
provided. In actual process, usually the anneal treatment is performed after forward draw in order to eliminate the effect of
residual stress. Therefore, the keywords and their content in
importing files about the distribution of residual stress should be
omitted manually for the second step simulation. In this study,
the simulation of hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process is conducted by dividing the process into two steps, two
cases both annealing and non-annealing treatment are investigated.
In general, the magnitude and change of fluid pressure are
known in hydro-mechanical deep drawing process. The most
critical problem in finite element analysis for hydro-mechanical
deep drawing process is how to build the model of fluid pressure including the pressure distribution and the friction effect
between blank and tool.
The keyword *LOAD MASK in LS DYNA code is used as
an indicator to put distributed pressure on the three-dimensional
shell element of the workpiece. The sheet metal is divided into
two parts by two cylinder faces formed via outer brim of the die
profile stretching along the drawing direction. The format of the
keyword *LOAD MASK is given in Table 1.
Table 1
The format of the keyword *LOAD MASK in a dynain file of LS-DYNA
*LOAD MASK

Fig. 1. Schemes for the action style of the fluid pressure: (a) the fluid pressure
for axial pushing is the same as that in die cavity, (b) the fluid pressure for axial
pushing is independent on that in die cavity and (c) the fluid pressure for axial
pushing is independent on that in die cavity, which acts on the blank by a pushing
ring.

$
$

PID
1
ICYCLE
200

LCID
5

VID1
0

OFF
0.0

BOXID
7

LCIDM
6

VID2
8

INOUT
0

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S.D. Zhao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 187188 (2007) 300303

To the reverse deep drawing process for cylindrical cups,

the fluid pressure in die cavity is defined by *LOAD MASK
keyword and five terms are included as follows:
a. The curves of fluid pressure in die cavity and the outer brim
of the die profile are established after the other modeling of
reverse deep drawing process has been obtained. Then the
file of LS-DYNA about the input information is exported.
b. The curve about fluid pressure is defined by the term of
DEFINE CURVE in DYN file.
c. The cylinder which the top surface coincides with blank, and
extended along the drawing direction and external connection
to the outer brim of die profile is defined by the term of
DEGFINE BOX in DYN file.
d. The outer brim curve of the die profile is defined by the term
of DEFINE CURVE in DYN file. It is noted that the value of
the DATTYP item should be set as 1.
e. Finally, the keyword *LOAD MASK is defined in light of
the format mentioned above in DYN file.
A finite element modeling for hydro-mechanical reverse
drawing operation is shown in Fig. 2. The punch diameter is
50 mm. Fig. 2a is the finite element modeling for reverse drawing operation where the punch, die and blank holder are included.
The radial pushing force is substituted by node force. Fig. 2b is

Fig. 3. Thickness distribution for optimal parameters combination.

the plotting of the thickness distribution for a cylindrical cup

drawn by reverse drawing process. The radial pushing force and
fluid pressure in this simulation are both 15 MPa.
The optimization of uniform design is performed only on unit
blank holding force, radial pushing force and fluid pressure in
die cavity for the other parameters are invariable in experiment.
The results are shown in Fig. 3 where the unit blank holding
force is 2.2 MPa, the pressure exerting on the radial pushing
ring is 0.1 MPa, the fluid pressure in die cavity is 12 MPa and
the punch and die profile radius is 5 and 5.5 mm, respectively.
4. Experiment
4.1. Reverse deep drawing tool
The tool for reverse deep drawing with radial pushing effect is shown in
Fig. 4. The punch diameter is 37.3 mm, the radius of punch profile is 5 mm, the
die diameter (the inner diameter of the punchdie) is 39.5 mm, the die profile
radius is 5.5 mm and the drawing ratio of reverse deep drawing is 0.533. The
pushing ring along the direction of sidewall is fixed on the conventional reverse
deep drawing tool. The axial pushing force is amplified by the area change from
pushing ring to workpiece brim. The partial deformation force can be obtained
from the axial pushing force, then the radial stress of flange reduced and the
friction holding effect come into being. In addition, the fluid lubrication can be

Fig. 2. Finite element simulation modeling and thickness distribution for hydromechanical reverse deep drawing: (a) simulation modeling and (b) the thickness
distribution.

Fig. 4. Picture of experiment tool.

S.D. Zhao et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 187188 (2007) 300303

303

5. Conclusion
The axial pushing force can improve the deformation extent
of blanks considerably, and is one of the key factors for reverse
deep drawing process. The higher the axial pushing force, the
lower the fluid pressure due to the action of the pushing ring. The
controllability of the system for hydro-mechanical reverse deep
drawing is improved by supplying the pressure fluid for pushing ring and die cavity separately. The finite element simulation
for hydro-mechanical reverse deep drawing process can be performed successfully by DYNAFORM-PC code combining with
modifying *LOAD MASK keyword manually.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Doctoral Foundation of
Xian Jiaotong University (Granted No. DFXJTU2005-11) and
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Granted No.
50375117) for funding this research.
References

Fig. 5. The parts obtained from different stages: (a) the part with the initial
diameter 110 mm, (b) the part with the initial diameter 120 mm and (c) the final
cup with the initial diameter 110 mm.
formed if the fluid pressure in die cavity exceeds the open pressure. All these
reasons mentioned above make the reverse deep drawing coefficient reduce.

4.2. Experiment results

At the first stage, conventional deep drawing is performed using 08Al circle
blanks with different diameter. The circle blanks are obtained by linear cutting
process and the brims of them are polished using abrasive paper. The blank
is clamped by hydraulic pressure in forward drawing. The pressure in blank
holding cylindrical is 2.5 MPa. The cups obtained at first stage are presented in
Fig. 5a and Fig. 5b.
A good workpiece is obtained using reverse drawing process where the
pressure in die cavity is 12.5 MPa, the pressure supplying as radial pushing
force is 1.35 MPa and the unit blank holding force is 2.1 MPa. The final cup is
shown in Fig. 5c.
The surface quality of the cup obtained by hydro-mechanical reverse deep
drawing process is considerably good. The surface defect of die cannot affect
the surface of the cup. The deformation line of punch profile resulting from the
thinning of the punch profile in forward drawing is shown in Fig. 5c. In other
words, the results of reverse draw are correlate with the results of forward draw,
especially the geometry and thickness distribution of it.

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