A numerical study on intended and unintended failure mechanisms in blanking of sandwich plates

Abstract

Metal-polymer-metal sandwich plates are widely used in the automotive and aerospace industry. As for different applications the sandwich plates can be divided into two types. They are sound-damping laminates with a polymer core much thinner than the metallic faces and low-density laminates with a core thickness of approximately 40-60% of the total thickness. One frequent process step in production of parts made of these plates is the blanking process whose hereditary effects draw the limits of further forming stages or service performance and life; e.g. the failure of the adhesive in the thermoplastic polymer interface affects the sound-damping efficiency intensively. With this motivation, we present FE simulation of an axi-symmetric blanking process of steel/polyethylene/steel sound-damping laminates. The mechanical behavior of the metallic layers was characterized by finite strain rate independent elasto-plasticity where progressive material deterioration and fracture are given account for using continuum damage mechanics (CDM). This material model is made accessible via implementations as VUMAT subroutines for ABAQUS/Explicit. Possible failure of the thermoplastic polymer which may lead to delamination of the metallic layers is modeled using ABAQUS built-in cohesive zone elements. The results show that existing intended and unintended failure modes, e.g. blanking of the metallic and thermoplastic polymer constituents as well as failure of polymer layer under shear and compression, can be effectively studied with the proposed framework for process enhancement. As a future work, a damage coupled nonlinear visco-elastic constitutive model will be devised for the simulation of the thermoplastic layer in low-density laminates. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.