Investigation of EN AW 5754 Aluminum Alloy’s Formability at Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

Nowadays, mass reduction is the most often used term in the automotive industry. Car manufacturers are continuously working on getting ever lighter models than the previous ones, because of the global competition and the rigorous emission rules. A light car has many advantages: lower consumption, better handling, longer operating distance, etc. The emission rules forced the car brands to start new researches to find new solutions for mass reduction. The formula is relatively simple, using lighter or less materials or both and the car will be lighter. In the recent solutions there are three different ways: application of high strength steels, aluminum alloys, and carbon-composite elements. Our investigations are focusing mainly on aluminum, because of its high mass reduction potential. The biggest problem with the aluminum is its low formability. The formability of aluminum is lower than the steel, and it causes problems for the manufacturers. To increase the formability of the aluminum is a hot topic in the research and development area. Forming at elevated temperatures is one of the best solutions to increase the formability of aluminum. The relation between the formability and the forming temperature is not linear, furthermore beyond the optimum forming temperature the formability decreases. We need dozens of investigations to describe the perfect relation, but sometimes a good approximation is enough to form sheet products safely. In our work we investigated the EN AW 5754 aluminum alloy sheet at room temperature, 130°C, 200°C and 260°C. From these tests we could obtain FLC curves of the alloy at different temperatures. Using these curves, the process engineers could find the optimum parameters of their forming process.