A new void coalescence mechanism during incremental sheet forming: Ductile fracture modeling and experimental validation

The forming limit of sheet metal can be significantly improved by incremental sheet metal forming(ISF) process, however lacks of relevant fundamental researches. Besides, accurate prediction of formability based on deeper understanding of deformation mechanism is beneficial for the evaluation of ductile failure behavior in ISF process. In the present work, a new void coalescence approach, that voids coalesce closely along meridianal direction rather than conventional thickness direction, is proposed and its influence on formability is investigated. The improved formability is attributed to the formation of closely-packed void clusters along meridianal direction, and these void clusters can stably exist inside the sheet metal even after void coalescence. By introducing two independent parameters into classic GTN model, an extended GTN damage model is developed to describe this new void coalescence mechanism in ISF process, and is validated through a series of experiments. Through investigations in this work, the fundamental understanding of improved formability in ISF is revealed, and the extended GTN model shows its comprehensive capability in predicting ductile fracture behavior with a satisfactory accuracy.