Determination of appropriate temperature distribution for warm forming of aluminum alloys

In spite of various advantages of warm forming process in realizing lightweight parts/structures for low-mass vehicles, its practical applications to automobile body are still limited due to many unknowns in the fundamental understanding of deformation behavior of the material in warm forming conditions. This paper presents a methodology to determine proper temperature levels and zones for a successful warm forming operation. A comparison of experimental and finite element analysis (FEA) results is presented to verify the effectiveness of FEA in warm deep drawing process. Design of experiments (DOE) method is used along with FEA to determine the proper temperature distribution of tooling and blank for successful warm forming process. Results of this study offer some basic guidelines for process and tooling design for warm forming of sheet metals.