Investigating Stresses Developed during Mechanical Forming of Steel through Finite Element Analysis

Stresses majorly affect the mechanical properties of materials. However, structural failures are often caused by the combined effect of residual stresses and applied stresses. It is practically impossible for a manufactured component to be entirely free of residual stresses because these stresses developed during the manufacturing process and certain amount remain in the component even after the process is completed. This study reports the findings of the investigation into the developed stresses during mechanical forming of the steel sheet. The result revealed that the Von Mises stresses developed, increases during the forming process. Also, the original tensile stresses in the material changed to compressive stresses along the inner radius as the punch strokes increases. Lastly, it was observed that the locked in stresses in the material after the process were tensile in nature and such are not beneficiary to the structural integrity of the manufactured component even though an average value of 0.057540 MPa was recorded for this study at the bend radius, distance away from the neutral plane.