It is necessary to improve mechanical and optical properties in the optical disk substrates as the information storage density using short wavelength laser are being developed. The birefringence distribution is regarded as one of the most important optical properties for optical disk. In the present study, the birefringence distrubution is calculated using the Leonov model for viscoelastic constitutive equations and Cross/WLF model for viscosity approximation. The effects of processing conditions upon the development of birefringence discosity approximation. The effects of processing conditions upon the development of birefringence distribution in the optical disk were examined theoretically. It was found that the values of the birefringence distributions were very sensitive to the mold wall temperature history which minimizes the birefringence distribution. The analytical results showed the possibility of improving mechanical and optical properties in the optical disk substrates by active control of the mold wall temperature history.

The roll Pass design is one of the most important processes to design the whole equipment of the rods and bars rolling system. In this study, the roll pass design program named TollRo(Rolling Factory Organizer) was developed. conventional methods to design roll pass were analyzed and a new algorithm to design the dimension of the intermediate groove was introduced. Object oriented programming technology was implemented in this design program. It comprises GUI(Graphic User Interface), function of automatic pass design, function of modifying pass schedule and database of material properties. The developed program can be used to design roll pass with consistency for the rods and bars rolling system. The man-hours for the whole design can be drastically reduced. The design parameters of rolling system can be extracted quickly by this program.

Recently, most of researches for sheet metal deep drawing process have been performed on the formability of axisymmetric shape, but there are not any concrete reports on the formability of non-axisymmetric shape. In addition, the conventional shape radius of the punch and die has been determined by trial-and-error using industrial experience and post processing test, and only approximate shape radius of the punch and die has been presented. In this study, the optimal shape radius of the punch and die in deep drawing process with biaxisymmetric blank shape is proposed. Through the deep drawing experiment, especially it is found that in order to obtain the optimal products, and improvement of formability can be researched by selection of such punch and die shape radius that gives an adequate thickness distribution in all processes.

Wrinkling is one of the major defects in sheet metal products and may be also attributable to the wear of the tool. The initiation and growth of wrinkles are influenced by many factors such as stress state, mechanical properties of the sheet material, geometry of the body, and contact condition. It is difficult to analyze the wrinkling initiation and growth considering the factors because the effects of the factors are very complex and the wrinkling behavior may show a wide variation for small deviations of the factors. In this study, the bifurcation theory is introduced for the finite element analysis of wrinkling initiation and growth. All the above mentioned factors are conveniently considered by the finite element method. The finite element formulation is based on the incremental deformation theory and elastic-plastic elements considering the planar anisotropy of the sheet metal. The proposed method is verified by employing a column buckling problem. And then, the initiation and growth of wrinkling in deep drawing of cylindrical cup are analyzed.

The finite element mesh approach for tool surface description is applied effectively to analyze sheet metal stamping processes. To improve the mesh quality and the stability of the mesh generation process, a gybrid method based on the grid approach and the Delaunay triangulation is proposed in the present work. In the present study, a general method for the mathematical description of arbitrarily shaped tool surface is proposed by introducing the parametric surface approach. A polynomial function employed to describe the base parametric surface and the boundary curves are defined to describe arbitrary three-dimensional trimmed surfaces. To verify the validity of the proposed method, automatic mesh generation is carried out for some shosen complicated parts including actual automotive panel.

A finite element analysis has been performed to investigate the effect of die clearance on shear planes in the fine blanking of a part of automobile safety belt. For the analysis, S45C is selected as an material, which is used in manufacturing the part of automobile safety belt, and Cockcroft-Latham fracture criterion is applied. Effect of die Clearance on die-roll width, die-roll depth, burnish zone, and fracture zone has been investigated in the finite element analysis by a rigid-plastic FEM code, DEFORM-2D. From the analysis, it has been found that die-roll depth and depth of the shear plane increase with increasing die clearance. And the burnish zone decreases with increasing die clearance, but the variation of fracture zone is opposite to that of burnish zone because the increase in die clearance requires less fracture energy. Theoretical predictions are compared with experimental results. There is a good agreement between theory and experiment.

In this paper, a computer simulation technique for the forging process having a floating die is presented. The penalty rigid-plastic finite element method is employed together with an iteratively force-balancing method, in which the convergence is achieved when the floating die part is in force equilibrium within the user-specified tolerance. The force balance is controled by adjusting the velocity of the floating die in an automatic manner. An application example of a three-stage cold forging process is given.

In this paper, a general approach to structural analysis of forging die sets is presented and the related design system, AFDEX/DIE, is introduced. Structural analysis of die sets is conducted by the finite element method considering both contact problem and shrink fit. In the approach, amount of shrink fit is controlled by thermal load, i.e., temperature difference between die insert and shrink rings. The loading conditions are extracted automatically from the simulation results obtained by a rigie-thermoviscoplatic finite element method. Typical application examples are given, which show the applicability of the approach and the related program.

This paper is concerned with the optimization of the drive for linear-guide press which is one of mechanical presses. The design of linear-guide drive for a mechanical press is introduced and the drive for the linear-guide press is optimized for the improvement of load and velocity characteristics. As a result of optimization, the load capacity during stroke increases and the slide velocity decreases in working region, respectively. The new design could be suited to many applications in precision forming such as extrusion and the sheet metal-forming processes.

Square dies are widely used for hot extrusion processes with high production rate, however, the design and manufacture of square dies mainly relies on experience of industrial engineers. To overcome such difficulty, this study presents a method of automatic generation of NC-codes for the manufacture of extrusion square dies. The result shows that the method can reduce the lead-time for the design and manufacture of square dies.

Some deep drawing characteristics to the elevated temperatures were investigated for the SCPI steel sheets by using the Cr-coated die. For this investigations, six steps of temperature ranges, from room temperature to 25$0^{\circ}C$, and six kinds of drawing ratio, from 2.4 to 2.9 were adopted. As a result, the limiting drawing ratio, maximum drawing force, and the maximum drawing depth were sensitively affected by the elevated temperatures, and the more stable thickness strain distribution was observed to the elevated temperatures. Some experimental results were compared with analytical results using the DYNA-3D code.

The influence of rolling draughts on the formation of through-thickness textures in aluminum 5000X sheet was investigated by X-ray texture measurements and microstructure observations. In order to intensify the deformation inhomogeneities, cold rolling was performed without lubrication. Applying a large draught gave rise to the formation of the shear texture at the surface, whereas a normal plane strain testure formed at the surface after deformation with a small draught. The orientation density along the $\beta$-fiber orientations which developed in the center layer of the rolled specimen was also dependent on the strain gradients in a roll gap. Upon annealing, the deformed substructure of sample surfaces was transformed into a fine grained recrystallized microsturcture through extended recovery reaction. However, coarse grains developed after the discontinuous recrystallization which gave rise to the development of the Cube-texture.