Simulation of Shock Wave Assisted Free and Shape Forming of Metallic Plates in a Shock Tube

Abstract

Due to their complexity, certain engineering problems like finding shock strength, Mach number etc. and the interaction of shock wave with a structure in free and restricted metal forming techniques cannot be achieved in a single experimentation, these can be obtained only through a number of trials and that leads to increase in cost and time. In such cases both cost and time can be reduced by adopting numerical simulations. In this projectcommercial software ANSYS is used to simulate the propagation shock wave through a shock tube, free and shape forming of metallic plates subjected to this shock wave. Shock Mach numbers up to 2.12 have been generated by varying the driver to driven pressure ratios. Thin copper plates of diameter 60mm and thickness of 0.5mm and 0.3mm are subjected to shock wave loadingin order to form into dies.These dies,madeof structural steel are modelled with pre-defined shapes. The plate peakoverpressures ranging from 9 to 20bar have been generated.The midpoint deflection, Von Mises stress and strain are calculated for free forming copper plates. The simulated results are compared with the experimental values available in literature. The simulated results match well with the experimental values.