Tool wear in sheet metal stamping

This paper discusses our recent research on wear at the die radius in sheet metal stamping. According to wear theory, contact pressure and sliding distance are the two dominant factors in determining sliding wear. We applied the finite element analysis to accurately quantify the contact pressure and sliding distance at the die radius in sheet metal stamping. The results were then applied to analyze sliding wear at the die radius. We found that a typical two-peak steady-state contact pressure response exists during a channel forming process. The steady-state contact pressure response was preceded by an initial transient response, which produced extremely large and localized contact pressures. We proposed a method to numerically quantify the sliding distance, which was applied to examine the contact sliding distance at the die radius. Correlating the contact pressure and sliding distance, a new insight into the wear/galling that occurs at the die radius in sheet metal stamping was gained. The results show that the region close to zero degrees on the die radius is likely to experience the most wear, with the identified transient stage contributing to a large proportion of the total wear.