Springback characteristics of arched aluminum alloy gusset plate after stamping forming

Abstract

The arched gusset joint is a typical joint system for aluminum alloy single-layer shells. Based on the experimental and numerical analyses, this paper investigates the springback characteristics of arched aluminum alloy gusset (AAAG) plate after stamping forming. Firstly, the refined finite element (FE) models are established with ABAQUS/Explicit & Standard and verified against the 3D scanning results of 9 full-scale gusset plates. The good agreement confirms that the FE models are able to predict the springback value of the gusset plate accurately. Subsequently, a detailed parametric analysis is conducted; the results indicate that the springback rate of the AAAG plate rises with the increase of nominal yield strength and gusset plate radius but decreases with the increase of material elastic modulus, stamping camber, gusset plate thickness and opening area ratio of the gusset plate. Finally, the formulae to estimate the springback value of the AAAG plate are proposed by theoretical derivation and regression analysis.