Prediction of wrinkling initiation in sheet metal forming processes

The initiation and growth of wrinkles are influenced by many factors such as stress ratios, the mechanical properties of the sheet material, the geometry of the workpiece, contact condition, etc. It is difficult to analyze wrinkling initiation and growth while considering ail the factors because the effects of the factors are very complex and studies of wrinkling behavior may show a wide scattering of data even for small deviations in factors. The finite element analyses of wrinkling initiation and growth in sheet metal forming process provide detailed information about the wrinkling behavior of sheet metal The direct analysis of wrinkling initiation and growth, however, brings about a little difficulty in complex industrial problems because it requires large memory size and long computation time. From the industrial viewpoint of tooling design, therefore, readily available information on the possibility and location of wrinkling is sometimes more preferable to detailed and time-consuming analysis results. In the present study, in order to give such readily available information on wrinkling initiation, the wrinkling factor, which shows the locations and relative possibility of wrinkling initiation, is proposed as a convenient tool of relative wrinkling estimation based on the energy criterion. The rehability of the wrinkling factor is verified through the buckling analyses of sheet strips. The location and relative possibility of wrinkling initiation are predicted by calculating the wrinkling factor in various sheet metal forming processes such as cylindrical cup deep drawing, spherical cup deep drawing, and elliptical cup deep drawing. Finally, the wrinkling factor proposed in the present study is also implemented in the prediction of wrinkling in the door inner stamping process. For verification of the calculated wrinkling factor, detailed zone analyses with fine meshes are carried out for the regions where wrinkling is predicted.