In order to take into account the strong anisotropy and the tension-compression asymmetry of AZ31 sheet alloy, the Cazacu-Plunkett-Barlat yield criterion(Cazacu, 2006), CPB06, was adopted in the present material modeling. The variation of anisotropic coefficients which describe the yield surface evolution of AZ31 is optimized using an interpolation function based on specific calibration results. It generates continuous yield surfaces, which makes it possible to describe the different hardening rates in tension and compression as well as tension-compression asymmetry of magnesium alloys. The ability of the CPB06 yield criterion to predict experimental results was demonstrated and compared with that of the Hill(1948) yield criterion.

The production technology is the basic of manufacturing for various materials and components. This technology can influence the quality and productivity of leading export products such as automobile, ship, and electronic device. Besides, the production technology is very useful to apply to other manufacturing fields and has a great ripple effect. However, it is very difficult to make the production technology into standardization and knowledge-based database because the production technology is dependent in hands-on experience. In this study, the knowledge-sharing platform for the molding & forming technology which is a branch of the production technology is introduced. This platform is web-based system and has the knowledge authoring tool technologies storage, semantic database, and web portal service. Therefore, the molding & forming technology can be shared and spread easily by the knowledge-sharing platform.

Recent years have seen advent of hot stamped parts made from laser-welded blanks of boron steels for structures requiring high crash energy absorption. However, the presence of Al-Si coating interfered with satisfactory mechanical characterizations after laser butt welding. In this study, laser ablation technology was considered in order to facilitate adequate mechanical characterization of the final hot-stamped panels.

A Finite Element (FE)-based model is proposed for predicting the roll force in an edger. The model is developed on the basis of the hypothetical mode of rolling and the least-squares regression analysis from the result of the FE approach. This model reflects the effect of process variables affected by the roll force, and has three dimensionless parameters, I.e., shape factor, reduction ratio and width-to-thickness ratio. The model prediction compared satisfactorily with experiment observations.

The energy absorbing characteristics of crash members in a car collision play an important role in controlling the amount of damage to the passenger compartment. Crash members filled with aluminum foam are expected to have reduced mass while maintaining or even improving the crashworthiness compared to the conventional hollow-beam types. Finite element simulations are carried out in the present work to assess the improvement of crashworthiness by the use of aluminum foam fillers. The numerical results agreed well with experimental measurements. Parametric studies are conducted to analyze the effect of impact velocity, weld strength, and initiator on the crash response.

This paper deals with effects of certain important factors in a tube drawing operation, such as the use of a mandrel, die radius and tangential angle at die outlet, on the deformation behavior of a small-diameter seamless tube. Both experimental and finite element simulation studies are carried out to assess the effects of the above parameters. Experiments and finite element predictions are compared. The use of a mandrel simplifies the design of tube drawing, but also induces some difficulties from increased process complexity. The effects of die outlet tangential angle and radius are discussed in detail.

The combination of tailor welded blank (TWB) and hot stamping often offers improved crash-worthiness and reduced mass of stamped parts in the automobile body. To investigate the formability of laser TWB and the reliability of weld line, the present study used 22MnB5 boron steel sheet of the same thickness and used the Erichsen cupping test at elevated temperatures. The effects of laser direction, die temperature, weld line positions and forming speed on formability(the limiting dome height) were studied and the results were compared with the formability of the base material.

Direct laser melting(DLM) is promising as a joining method for producing parts for automobiles, aerospace, marine and medical applications. An advantageous characteristic of DLM is that it affects the parent metal very little. The mechanical properties of parts made by DLM are strongly affected by the porosity and surface roughness of the laser melted beads. This is a systematic study of the effects of the porosity and surface roughness of laser melted beads using various processing parameters, such as laser power, scan rate and overlapping ratio of the fill spacing. The specimens were fabricated with 316L and 304L austenitic stainless steel powder. Dense parts with low porosity were obtained at low laser scan speed, as it increased the aspect ratio of the parental material and the depth of penetration. The variations of surface roughness were examined at various processing parameters such as overlapping ratio and laser power.

The production of high-precision micro-sized screws, used to fasten parts of micro devices, generally utilizes a cold thread-rolling process and two flat dies to create the teeth. The process is fairly complex, involving parameters such as die shape, die alignment, and other process variables. Thus, up-front finite-element(FE) simulation is often used in the system design procedure. The final goal of this paper is to produce high-precision screw with a diameter of $800{\mu}m$ and a thread pitch of $200{\mu}m$ (M0.8${\times}$P0.2) by a cold thread rolling process. Part I is a first-stage effort, in which FE simulation is used to establish process parameters for thread rolling to produce micro-sized screws with M1.4${\times}$P0.3, which is larger than the ultimate target screw. The material hardening model was first determined through mechanical testing. Numerical simulations were then performed to find the effects of such process parameters as friction between work piece and dies, alignment between dies and material. The final shape and dimensions predicted by simulation were compared with experimental observation.

A new manufacturing process is presented for automotive drive plate using a boron-containing carbon steel sheet, which is hot-formed and press quenched. Particular attention was given to the capability of the process in minimizing dimensional change.

This paper investigates the effect of strain rate on the anisotropic deformation behavior of advanced high strength steel sheets. Uniaxial tensile tests were carried out on TRIP590 and DP780 steel sheets at strain rates ranging from 0.001/sec to 100/sec to determine yield stresses and r-values at various loading angles from the reference rolling direction. R-values were determined by the digital image correlation technique. Hill48 and Yld2000-2d yield functions were tested for their capability to describe the plastic deformation anisotropy of the materials. Initial yield loci were constructed using the Yld2000-2d yield function, which adequately described the anisotropic behavior of the materials. The shape of the initial yield loci was found to change with different strain rate, and the anisotropic behavior decreased with increasing strain rate.

Based on the facts that AZ31 magnesium alloy can be blow formed just like superplastic aluminum alloys and that most superplastic alloys fail by cavitation, the present study was undertaken to investigate the cavitation behavior of a fine-grained AZ31 sheet during blow forming at the elevated temperature. Other points of interest included the much lower strain rate and temperature dependencies of the magnesium alloy compared with conventional superplastic alloys. It was also aimed to find if cavitation in the AZ31 alloy can be suppressed by hydrostatic pressure, as is the case in most superplastic alloys. Interestingly, the application of hydrostatic pressure did not increase the blow formability of AZ31 sheet, even though it reduced the degree of cavitation. A possible reason for this behavior is discussed.

Flow forming is an incremental forming process in which rollers are used to form cylindrical parts with repeated turning of both roller and starting material. Both sheet and tube can be used as the starting material. The process is highly useful for producing hollow shaped parts from a tube, with the benefit of the average strain in the final shape being significantly lower than that from a sheet material. In the present study, the flow forming process was studied and optimized for producing a hollow shaped part from seamless steel tube by both experiment and numerical analysis. Upon considering the difficulty of forming seamless steel sheet, the thickness reduction was distributed over several tool paths. In the end, an optimum process condition was attained, and the experiment verified the simulation results.