Study of bendability of steel sheets

In the present contribution bending tests are modeled and the bendability of steel sheets is evaluated. Bendability refers to the ratio of the minimum bend radius to the initial sheet thickness at which the bending proc-ess is successfully accomplished [1]. The metallurgic microstructure of the studied sheet consists in two principal phases: a fully dense matrix (which may be itself composed by several metallurgic phases) and spherical voids. For that purpose, the Gurson Tvergaard Needleman law ([2], [3], [4]) is used and significantly modified. The behavior of the fully dense matrix is de-fined by the anisotropic Hill 48 function and the Swift hardening law. The width of the sheet is assumed to be large enough to neglect the transversal strains and the stress component in the thickness direction is also neglected. The bending operation can thus be modelled by a plane strain-plane stress loading. The influence of mechanical pa-rameters such as the initial porosity, the Lankford coefficient and the strain harden-ing exponent on the bendability is studied herein. The failure here is defined by the onset coalescence of neighbour voids and is checked by using Thomason [5], Pardoen [6] and Brunet [7] coalescence models. So the influence of other phenomena (like the shear band development and the localized necking) on the bendability is neglected here.