Evaluation of the quality for sheet deep drawing using a magnetorheological fluid (MRF)

Abstract

Sealing problems, subsequent cleaning processes and poor force transmission effect etc. series of problems which strongly restrict the development and application of traditional medium pressure-based sheet forming technology. To overcome these problems, the magnetorheological fluid (MRF) can be used as the alternative force transmission medium. In this study, the deep drawing process of a 304 stainless steel sheet using MRF was investigated. The die cavity was filled with MRF and electric current was used to quantitatively adjust the magnetic fields distribution, which then controls the deformation behavior of the forming sheet. As compared to the conventional deep drawing process, experimental results clearly show that significant improvement in the produced sample quality was obtained when using the MRF with the electric current of 2 A. These improvements include: the height of the boundary circle reduces by 20%, the wall thickness distribution is more uniform, the rebound ratio correspondingly reduces from 9.6% to 0.67%, and the degree of sticking mode and the size precision are significantly increased. The results of this study provide scientific guidance to solve the bottleneck in the traditional deep drawing forming technology. The potential applications of the MRF-based new deep drawing technology to improve the product quality were explored.