Research Article

Tool-life prediction under multi-cycle loading during metal forming: a feasibility study

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College, SW7 2AZ London, UK
² Science and Technology on Power Beam Processes Laboratory, Beijing Aeronautical Manufacturing Technology Research Institute, 100024 Beijing, P.R. China

^* Corresponding author: liliang.wang@imperial.ac.uk

Received: 30 September 2015
Accepted: 4 November 2015

Abstract

In the present research, the friction and wear behaviour of a hard coating were studied by using ball-on-disc tests to simulate the wear process of the coated tools for sheet metal forming process. The evolution of the friction coefficient followed a typical dual-plateau pattern, i.e. at the initial stage of sliding, the friction coefficient was relatively low, followed by a sharp increase due to the breakdown of the coatings after a certain number of cyclic dynamic loadings. This phenomenon was caused by the interactive response between the friction and wear from a coating tribo-system, which is often neglected by metal forming researchers, and constant friction coefficient values are normally used in the finite element (FE) simulations to represent the complex tribological nature at the contact interfaces. Meanwhile, most of the current FE simulations consider single-cycle loading processes, whereas many metal-forming operations are conducted in a form of multi-cycle loading. Therefore, a novel friction/wear interactive friction model was developed to, simultaneously, characterise the evolutions of friction coefficient and the remaining thickness of the coating layer, to enable the wear life of coated tooling to be predicted. The friction model was then implemented into the FE simulation of a sheet metal forming process for feasibility study.