Bending of Bi-Metal Sheets in Plane Strain

Over the past few decades, clad metal sheets have been broadly applied in industries because of their added values and excellent properties. One frequently used process in those applications is bending. To understand bending properties of clad metal sheets, an elasto-plastic analysis model for pure bending a bi-metal sheet in plane strain has been created in this article. As a result of bending a bi-metal sheet from copper C11000 and aluminum 1050 in diverse volume fractions, the configuration, which describes whether the harder metal is placed on the tensile side or the compression side, does not influence the bending moments needed for the bending process. A stress discontinuity can be observed on the clad layer and the neutral layer is always moving towards to the harder metal during bending. Once one base metal plastically deforms completely, the neutral layer stays at the same position. After the springback, the neutral layer returns to its original position. If it is across the clad interface during bending, the stress discontinuity on the clad layer gets larger after springback. Otherwise, the stress discontinuity would be reduced after springback. Moreover, the further the clad interface locates from the neutral layer, the more the discontinuity is reduced.