Study Of Numerical Simulation Of Middle Thick Plate Bending Process

Bending is a typical plate deformation process. Bended plates are used in various fields, including aviation, spacecrafts, automobile, railway and ironware. The enterprises which manufacture plates and plate products have already became one of the most important parts of the national economy.Plate thinning during bending process has a great effect on process design, dimension control and product performance. Therefore the research of plate bending process has a broad engineering background and application prospects.In recent years, the research of plate bending process has made a lot of progresses. There were also some achievements on plate thinning during bending process. However, the studies on bending process of plates with thickness of 4mm or more are still not enough. The effect of thinning, neutral layer displacement and mechanical properties to process design and product performance still need to be further studied and resolved.Five kinds of aluminum alloy middle thick plates were studied. The stress and strain in the thickness direction were analyzed based on neutral layer theory and delamination theory. General thinning calculation method of middle thick plate bending process was summed up reference to sheet bending theory.Multiple groups of bending processes with different types and sizes of aluminum alloy plates were designed and simulated with DEFORM-3D finite element simulation software. The processes of each group were conducted in experiments. The thinning data of simulation well coincided with those of theoretical calculation and experiments. The position of the neutral layer, the middle layer and the bending force were also obtained by analyzing the transient stress fields, transient strain fields and loads of the dies.The middle thick plate bending process and the finite element numerical simulation were bound together to reach the result of shortening product development cycle and reducing experiment and production costs. The results can provide help and reference for further research and process designing.