Influence of elevated surface temperature on the formability in cold forming of aluminum alloy sheets

Abstract

In recent decades, deep drawing has been widely used in the automotive industry for producing lightweight car body components of 5xxx and 6xxx aluminum alloys. Although sheets of these alloys are usually deep-drawn at room temperature, heat generated by friction and plastic deformation may locally increase the surface temperature of the drawing tools during the serial production of components. Therefore, this work investigates the influence of elevated surface temperatures of the tool on the formability of commercial hotmelt-lubricated 1.5 mm-thick EN AW-5182 and EN AW-6016-T4 sheets. Deep drawing experiments were performed at different constant surface temperatures between room temperature (RT) and 80 °C using a cross-shaped tool with open die. With increasing surface temperature, the maximum drawing depth – that was considered as indicator for the formability – decreased by about 21 % and 28 % for EN AW-6016-T4 and EN AW-5182, respectively. Tribological experiments performed using a pin-on-plate tribometer confirmed this trend. The results clearly showed that the coefficient of friction (COF) between the sheet and the tool significantly increase at elevated surface temperature; the most notable increase of the COF occurred between 40 °C and 60 °C.