Investigation on compression-springback performance of the SUS301 stainless steel gasket considering the residual stress

Abstract

In order to accurately and economically predict the sealing performance of a novel metal gasket, a virtual full-cycle testing method for metal gaskets based on ABAQUS software is proposed which integrates the gasket stamping, springback and compression-springback steps. The parameters of Hill'48 anisotropic yield model are obtained for the 0.2 mm thickness SUS301 stainless steel sheet using the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique. The influence of residual stress generated through forming on the later compression-springback performance is considered during the simulation analysis. The accuracy of the virtual testing method has been verified by comparing the simulation results with the experimental ones. The compression-springback performance of the SUS301 stainless steel half-bead gasket is investigated systematically through this virtual testing method. The virtual experiments are conducted to test the compression-springback behaviors of half-bead gaskets of different sizes. The effect of the geometrical parameters of the stamping die and the compression load on the compression-springback performance are discussed in detail. The results demonstrate that the optimal compression rate and the springback rate of the metal gasket can be obtained by adjusting the geometric parameters W (the width of the die) and H (the height of the die) appropriately under different loads. The primary motivation for proposing this method is to improve the numerical simulation accuracy of the compression-springback performance of the metal gasket, and thereby to replace the costly performance tests by the virtual experiments.