A Finite Element investigation of thickness reduction in superplastic forming of Ti-۶ Al-۴V Titanium Alloy

Super plastic Forming (SPF) is a close net-shape manufacturing process that provides various benefitsover conventional forming processes. Low stress flow is one of the main characteristics of this process whichresults in lower forming pressure. At the same time creating complex geometries out of hard metals, isachievable in this process due to low yield stress of metal because of the high temperature of the process. Inthis paper a finite element analysis for modeling superplastic forming of Ti-۶ Al-۴V Titanium Alloy ispresented. An axisymmetric FE model is created using ABAQUS explicit code, in order to simulate thesuperplastic forming process of a sheet into a complex shape embedding the creep behavior of the material.Mesh size optimization procedure is carried out. Model verification through comparison with wellestablishedexperimental results is presented as well. In conclusion, the thickness variation analysis of thefinal product is presented.

کلیدواژه ها:

Superplastic forming ، Finite element analysis ، stress flow