Parametric study on chain-die forming for advanced high strength steels

As the applications of AHSS for the automotive industry are increasing significantly within the last decade, it becomes more and more important to develop a new forming technology as an alternative or even a replacement to roll forming to overcome the difficulties and problems of manufacturing the AHSS parts. The springback of the material with higher strength and thinner thickness becomes more difficult to predict, which directly affects the application of roll forming in AHSS. Chain-die forming, as an alternative to roll forming proposed and developed recently in Australia, is expected to be a solution to the problems addressed. It has been proved that chain-die forming has the advantages of low redundant strain components during forming and nearly zero residual stresses in products. In this paper, a case study of forming an AHSS U-channel with pre-made holes is studied in order to explore the limitations of chain-die forming and exhibit the advantages of the new method over roll forming. FEA is employed to simulate the forming process and the results are compared with the experimental results.