Determination of a Constitutive Friction Law Using an Elastic-Plastic Half-Space Model

Friction influences metal forming processes both in economic and technical terms. A precise understanding of friction is inevitable as friction restricts the potential of the product design. Friction depends on the occurring contact loads which is especially true for sheet-bulk metal forming (SBMF) as the incorporated contact loads appear in a very broad range. Numerical simulations, which are verified experimentally, are carried out to analyse contact interactions which typically appear in SBMF. On the one hand the multi-scale character of rough surfaces requires a very fine resolution of the contact area, on the other hand a large contact area is necessary to be representative. A half-space model is chosen for the contact analysis, because it only depends on the two-dimensional surface boundary which consumes less computing capacity than the finite element method (FEM) with its three-dimensional volume approach for the same surface resolution and area. The outcome is a constitutive friction law (CFL) consisting of two equations. The law is implemented into the framework of FEM to see the impact in a typical SBMF-process which aims to form metal sheet into cups with integrated gearing teeth. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)