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Tensile properties of sheet steels at dynamic conditions are becoming more important for automotives in recent years due to the positive strain rate effect of steels which significantly improves energy absorption capability during crash events. However, several testing techniques are used by different testing laboratories, no testing standards are available, and the quality of data generated by different laboratories is often not comparable. In order to improve the data quality at high strain rate testing conditions and thus to improve the accuracy of crash simulation results, The International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) initiated a project to develop the “Recommendations for Dynamic Tensile Testing of Sheet Steels”. The document provides guidelines for key elements of high strain rate testing, testing techniques, input methods, specimen geometry and stress/strain measurement instrumentations.

Bending under tension is an important deformation mode during stamping and has been observed to limit achievable ductility for high strength steels. This paper presents experimental results from Angular Stretch Bend (ASB) testing, which has been used to characterize bending under tension behavior for several conventional, advanced high strength steels and ultra-high strength steels. Steels that were studied include Bake Hardenable steels, High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steels, Dual Phase (DP) steels, Transformation Induced Plasticity (TRIP) steels, and tempered martensitic steels. Failure heights were determined under sample lockout conditions for different punch radii. By comparing absolute formability measured by the failure height, the results can be used to provide material formability ranking for different R/t ratios. In addition, strain distributions were analyzed to provide bending under tension forming limits for the different steel grades.

Traditional constitutive models can only describe a parallel or divergent stress strain response at different strain rates. This paper presents a new constitutive model that can describe convergent, divergent or parallel stress strain patterns. The new model is a modification to the popular Johnson-Cook model. By comparison with the Johnson-Cook model using high strain rate data of seven high strength steels, the new model is evaluated. The results showed that the new model could adequately describe the stress strain relation at high strain rates for the seven steels. In addition, an empirical relationship between the parameters in the new constitutive model and quasi-static tensile data has been developed based on the analysis of several high strength steels. The equation requires only quasi-static data as the input and is capable of estimating flow stresses at high strain rates.

The influence of die corner geometry on the attainable draw depth of rectangular parts was investigated using 3-D FEM and optimum rectangular blanks. Axisymmetric cup analysis was not adequate because a corner assist effect promotes corner draw. Guidelines for selecting corner radius were developed and the sensitivities of the maximum part depth to other process variables, such as drawbead restraint force; die clearance gap; friction coefficient; strain rate sensitivity; material anisotropy; and strain hardening exponent, were simulated. The results are much more conservative than handbook rules, which to not to take into account the details of blank size, drawbead restraint, die geometry, material properties, and friction.