Experiment and numerical simulation on delamination during the laminated steel sheet forming processes

Laminated steel sheets, which have advantages in reducing vibration and noise, are widely used in home appliances, automotive components and building structures. With polymer layer laminated in steel sheets, the unique failure mode—delamination may occur in the forming process if the process parameters are defined improperly. In the presented work, firstly, the delamination is investigated by U channel forming in bending mode. Then, a step-bottom square cup drawing is also conducted to study the delamination in the deep drawing of the laminated sheet metal in more complex stress state. Nonlinear visco-elastic material model is applied to describe the mechanical behavior of polymer layer. Cohesive element and continuum shell elements are utilized to discretize the polymer layer and the outer steel sheets, respectively. The results of U channel forming indicate that increasing forming speed somewhat decreases the tendency of delamination, and increasing blank holding force (BHF) significantly diminishes the occurrence of delamination. Meanwhile, the results of the step-bottom square cup drawing reveal that the wrinkling of facial sheets often induces delamination. Increasing the BHF and the frictional coefficient prevents the occurrence of wrinkling and the delamination induced by wrinkling. However, when wrinkling is suppressed, further rising in BHF and frictional coefficient will increase the risk of direct delamination.