Effect of anisotropy and prebulging on hydromechanical deep drawing of mild steel cups

The hydromechanical deep drawing processes of mild steel cups have been investigated experimentally and numerically. Experiments were carried out with the fixed gap method (with spacers) and the conventional method (without spacers) under different prebulging pressures. The shape variations and the thickness distributions of the workpieces were measured and discussed. The effects of anisotropy and prebulging pressure on the final product quality are discussed. The processes were analyzed by the explicit finite element code DYNA3D with the Barlat–Lian’s three-parameter material model. The numerical results are compared with those obtained in the experiments.