The failure of AA3003 aluminum alloy sheet metal was predicted for non-isothermal viscous pressure bulging (VPB). Utilizing the coupled thermo-mechanical finite element method combined with ductile fracture criterion, the calculations were carried out for non-isotherm VPB at various temperatures and the influences of the initial temperature of viscous medium on failure mode of bulge specimens were investigated. The results show that the failure modes are different for the non-isothermal VPB with different initial temperatures of viscous medium. For the non-isothermal VPB of AA3003 aluminum alloy sheet with initial temperature of 250 ℃, when the initial temperature of viscous medium ranges from 150 to 180 ℃, the formability of sheet metal can be improved to a full extent. The validity of the predictions is examined by comparing with experimental results.
The present paper is devoted to developing a new numerical simulation method for the analysis of viscous pressure forming （VPF）, which is a sheet flexible-die forming （FDF） process. The pressure-carrying medium used in VPF is one kind of semisolid, flowable and viscous material and its deformation behavior can be described by the visco-elastoplastic constitutive model. A sectional finite element model for the coupled deformation analysis between the viscoelastoplastic pressure-carrying medium and the elastoplastic sheet metal is proposed. The resolution of the Updated Lagrangian （UL） formulation is based on a static explicit approach. The frictional contact between sheet metal and visco-elastoplastic pressure-carrying medium is treated by the penalty function method. Coupled deformation between sheet metal and visco-elastoplastic pressure-carrying medium with large slip is analyzed to validate the developed algorithm. Finally, the viscous pressure bulging （VPB） process of DC06 sheet metal is simulated. Good agreement between numerical simulation results and experimental measurements shows the validity of the developed algorithm.
Viscous pressure forming(VPF) of aluminum alloy AA3003 sheet metal at warm temperature was investigated by using coupled thermo-elastoplastic-viscoplastic finite element method. The influence of viscous medium temperature distribution on sheet fracture location was studied and the distributions of fracture factor at different temperatures were obtained by using ductile fracture criterion. The results show that the failure of sheet metal varies with increasing initial temperature of viscous medium. When the initial temperature of viscous medium is near that of sheet metal,the failure location occurs at dome center,and when the initial temperature of viscous medium is too low,however,the failure location occurs at die corner. The occurrence of fracture can be postponed and even prevented through controlling the temperature distribution in viscous medium.
