Stress development and shape change during press-hardening process using phase-transformation-based finite element analysis

Elastically driven shape change, or springback, in a press-hardened U-channel part made from a tailor-welded blank (TWB) was simulated using a fully coupled thermo-mechanical metallurgical finite element (FE) method. The TWB consists of boron steel and high-strength low-alloy steel, which have significantly different hardenabilities. A combined implicit explicit three-step simulation consisting of air cooling, forming and die quenching, and springback was used for computational efficiency. All the required material models such as the modified phase-transformation kinetics and phase-transformation-related stress-update scheme were implemented in the FE software ABAQUS with the user-defined subroutines UMAT, VUMAT, and HETVAL. The developed FE procedure, including the material models, satisfactorily predicted the experimentally measured shape changes of the TWB part. Here we present an in-depth analysis of the residual stress development during forming and die quenching using different material modeling schemes. It should be noted that the stress evolution of the two materials with high and low hardenabilities were significantly different depending on the phase transformation kinetics during forming and quenching. Moreover, in order to enhance the prediction capability of the press-hardening simulations, it was essential to include the phase-transformation-related strains in the material model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.