Experimental and numerical study on micro deep drawing with aluminium-copper composite material

Micro forming is a promising technology with the trend towards miniaturisation in industry, and micro deep drawing (MMD) process is a fundamental micro forming method with potential applications in forming of cups, hollows and boxes and has great advantages comparing to other micro manufacturing methods. As the preferred material for electrical conductors, aluminium (Al)-copper (Cu) composite material processes advantages of the low density and cost of aluminium and good conductivity of copper. In this paper, MMD has been studied experimentally and numerically with a purpose of understanding the deformation behaviour of a two-layer Al-Cu composite in microscale. Al-Cu composite material was rolled to 50 µm in thickness and then annealed at 400 ºC. The drawability of the annealed composite was investigated by MDD experiments. FE models with Voronoi tessellations were established to simulate the Al-Cu composite material during MDD process. Considering the grain heterogeneity, each Voronoi tessellation has been assigned with different mechanical properties based on experimental data. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experiment ones.