Abstract
A drawbead die for the experimental determination of drawbead forces was newly introduced in this paper. While the conventional Nine's drawbead die inevitably includes effects of a blank holding force on the measured drawbead forces, the new drawbead die excludes it by removing the blank holder contact in the dieface. Therefore, the new drawbead die can provide more realistic drawbead forces without considering somewhat arbitrary effect of blank holder with the computational procedure of forming process. The drawbead opening force and restraining force obtained by adopting the two experimental dies were compared for the validation of accuracy in the FEM simulation of automotive fender forming process. The compared section strains and draw-ins confirmed that the present drawbead die provides better drawbead forces for an accurate FEM simulation of sheet metal forming process.