An experimental study on the forming parameters of deep-drawable steel sheets in automotive industry

This paper evaluates different parameters affecting sheet metal forming and examines some experimental procedures by using standard tension test, u-notched tension test and clip-on tests. In order to predict practically the forming behaviour of the sheet steels in press shops, uniaxial tensile test, modified tensile tests and “clip-on” tensile tests were conducted in laboratory scale for interstitial free (IF) and bake hardening (BH) sheet steels used in automotive industry. A simple “clip-on device” was adapted to obtain limit strain in plane stretching conditions. Practical solutions were proposed in order to determine easily the forming limit diagrams (FLDs) of base metals (BM) and tailored welded blanks (TWB) when ranking the formability of sheet metals.