Experimental and numerical study of warm deep drawing of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheet

Warm forming of magnesium alloy sheet has attracted more and more attention in recent years. The formability of magnesium alloy sheet at elevated temperature depends on appropriate processes, and the fabrication of high-performance sheet. In this research, an AZ31 magnesium alloy sheet with excellent performances is fabricated by the cross-rolling and the uniform annealing treatments. The uniaxial tensile tests are conducted using a Gleeble 3500 thermal-mechanical simulator, and the mechanical properties of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheet are analyzed. Finally, some limiting drawing ratio (LDR) experiments are performed. The experiments show that the LDR can reach 2.0 at the forming temperature of 150 degrees C and the drawing velocity of 15 mm/s. A warm deep drawing process is also simulated by the finite element method. The influences of drawing temperature and blank holder force on the formability are numerically investigated. The simulation demonstrated that variable blank holder force technology can improve the LDR from 3.0 to 3.5, and decrease the wall thinning ratio from 15.21% to 12.35%. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.