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Abstract-During the last few years, several sheet hydroforming processes have been introduced. Despite the advantages of these methods, they have some limitations. Of the processes, the two main ones are the standard hydroforming and hydromechanical deep drawing. A new sheet hydroforming die set was proposed that has the advantages of both processes and eliminates their limitations. In this method, a polyurethane plate was used as a part of the die-set to control the blank holder force. This paper outlines the Taguchi optimization methodology, which is applied to optimize the effective parameters in forming cylindrical cups by the new die set of sheet hydroforming process. The process parameters evaluated in this research are polyurethane hardness, polyurethane thickness, forming pressure path and polyurethane hole diameter. The design of experiments based upon L9 orthogonal arrays by Taguchi was used and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to analyze the effect of these parameters on the forming pressure. The analysis of the results showed that the optimal combination for low forming pressure is harder polyurethane, bigger diameter of polyurethane hole and thinner polyurethane. Finally, the confirmation test was derived based on the optimal combination of parameters and it was shown that the Taguchi method is suitable to examine the optimization process.

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In the deep drawing of cups, the earing defects are caused by planar anisotropy in the sheet. Several methods have been developed to predicting the optimal blank to avoid the formation of ears. In the deep drawing processes, the use of an optimal blank shape not only saves the material but also it may reduce the occurrence of defects e.g. wrinkling and tearing. In addition, finding the desirable flange contour, eliminate the trimming step in the deep drawing of parts with flange. In this study, a systematic method based on sensitivity analysis has been used to find the optimal blank to obtain a desirable flange contour for a cylindrical cup by hydromechanical deep drawing process. With the aid of a wellknown dynamic explicit analysis code ABAQUS; optimum initial blank shape has been obtained. With the predicted optimal blank, both computer simulation and experiment are performed and the effect of blank shape on the some parameters such as thickness distribution and blank holder force during the forming process were investigated. It is shown that formed cup with an optimum blank shape has a better thickness distribution in the both rolled and perpendicular of rolled direction. And it was shown that the blank holder force of modified blank is higher than circular blank.

In the deep drawing processes, the use of an optimal blank shape not only saves the material but also it may reduce the occurrence of defects e.g. wrinkling and tearing. In addition, finding the desirable flange contour, eliminate the trimming step in the deep drawing of parts with flange. The main objective of this study is to optimize the blank shape in order to produce a cylindrical cup with desirable flange contour and investigation of its effect on important parameters. Presently, to overcome this issue, a very expensive and time consuming trial and error method is used. In this study, a systematic method based on sensitivity analysis has been used to find the optimal blank to obtain a desirable flange contour for a cylindrical cup by hydromechanical deep drawing process. With the aid of a well-known dynamic explicit analysis code ABAQUS; optimum initial blank shape has been obtained. With the predicted optimal blank, both computer simulation and experiment are performed and the effect of blank shape on the some parameters such as thickness distribution and forming pressure of the formed cups were investigated. It is shown that formed cup with an optimum blank shape has a better thickness distribution in the rolled direction.