A novel method to evaluate the high strain rate formability of sheet metals under impact hydroforming

In this study, a novel method was proposed to evaluate high strain rate (HSR) formability of Al-Cu-Mg 2B06-O sheets by impact hydroforming (IHF). IHF was suitable to manufacture hard-to-form sheets, since it combined the advantages of flexible liquid and impact impulse loading. Both 2D and 3D HSR formability curves were established to describe the relationship between impact energy, drawing height ratio (DHR) and deep drawing ratio (DDR). Moreover, the novel evaluation method was realized by finite element (FE) modeling using fluid-structure interaction (FSI) algorithm. FSI modeling was used to deal with the interaction of structure solid and flexible fluid. This evaluation means of FE modeling characterized with guiding production practice, saving evaluation costs, improving efficiency compared with corresponding experiments. The results obtained from FE modeling were in a remarkable agreement with those obtained from IHF experiments in the aspects of part shape, failure feature, thickness distribution. FE modeling showed that the limit deep drawing ratio (LDDR) and limit drawing height ratio (LDHR) were 1.99 and 1.04, respectively when the blank was completely deep drawn into the cavity of the die in one step only. FE modelling is proved to be reliable and efficient to estimate high strain rate formability of low formability metal sheets.