Experimental and numerical investigation of laminated steel sheet in V-bending process considering nonlinear visco-elasticity of polymer layer

Laminated steel sheet consists of two steel sheets and a polymer layer which bonds them. During forming process, mechanical properties of polymer layer significantly influence the shape of final product. In this study, a continuum model in which nonlinear visco-elasticity is taken into account has been developed for polymer layer of laminated steel sheet and implemented in a commercial finite element program by material subroutines. Lap-shear test and T-peel test have been conducted to obtain parameters of this continuum model. Two different methods are compared to establish a better method for modeling the polymer layer deformation in lap-shear test simulation. One is cohesive zone element and the other is contact method. In order to assess calculation efficiency, both explicit and implicit procedures are used to simulate lap-shear test, and T-peel test is simulated by implicit procedure to evaluate accuracy. The result indicates that cohesive element is easier to solve convergence problem and implicit procedure may save much simulation time. T-peel test data can be used to describe the normal mechanical behavior of polymer layer in an acceptable range. Finally, V-bending forming process has been studied to investigate the effect of polymer layer on the springback and final deformation shape through experiment and numerical simulation. The result indicates that the comparison between numerical simulation and experiment is in good agreement. The finite element model can accurately predict the final shape after bending and springback. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.