Springback and fracture in v-die air bending of thick stainless steel sheets

In this investigation, the attention is focused on the springback and fracture of thick stainless steel sheets. Nine different stainless grades and various thicknesses are tested. The thinnest sheet is 7.9 mm, whilst the thickest sheet is 31.3 mm. A consistent analytical model is constructed for prediction of the springback, the inner sheet radius prior to and after unloading, and the smallest die width. The springback calculated by this analytical model is in all cases smaller than that found experimentally. The correspondence between theory and practice is, however, very good, although the shift in the position of the neutral axis and thinning are neglected in the theoretical analysis. Fracture did not occur in any of the conducted bending operations. It is commonly assumed that fracture in v-die air bending is related to the reduction in the cross-section area at fracture, Z, in tensile testing. Z was greater than 70% for the majority of the studied materials. It is shown that particularly the mode of fracture (fracture through shear bands or by necking) should be studied in future investigations.