Numerical simulation of plastic deformation and mechanical response of strip rolled aluminium alloys

Abstract

During the optimal design and simulation of machining or forming processes, detailed simulation of structural response is typically required for use in Finite Element Analysis (FEA). In this study, the bulk temperature and rate dependent resistance to deformation of strip formed aluminium alloys is modelled using the Mechanical Threshold Stress model. The model is characterised to AA5182 alloy data and used in the FEA simulation of a strip rolling process. The effects of element choice, dynamic or quasi-static simulations and the use of particular modelling algorithms on the computational cost and overall accuracy associated with each simulation have to be considered. Given the correctly implemented material tangent, an implicit analysis is illustrated to allow larger stable time-steps. Dynamic and quasi-static solutions are very similar for the simulated process meaning inertia effects are negligible. It is further demonstrated that great care be given to the maximum allowable time step size in order to capture the expected interaction between temporal and spatial discretisation in a fully Lagrangian FEA simulation.