Modelling of tool wear during sheet metal forming of advanced stainless steel

Purpose and goal

The scientific objective of the cooperation is to develop models for prediction of tool wear during stainless steel forming, with special focus on the two material groups lean duplex steel, and deformation-hardening austenitic steels. The project is a means for international qualification for Boel Wadman, PhD Phys in cooperation with the following receiving environments: Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA, Outokumpu Stainless, Avesta Research Center and Grundfos Technology Centre in Denmark. During and after working visits at the receiving milieus Boel Wadman intends to publish academic articles with acknowledged researchers in order to qualify for Assistant Professor. She will also obtain hands-on experience in tooling solutions for stainless stamping, which will increase her merits as an international project leader within the field. These merits will be used to work as a Senior Researcher at Swerea IVF with national and international research project management and as a coordinator of quality assurance of research methods at the institute. The scientific objective of the cooperation is to develop models for prediction of tool wear during stainless steel forming, with special focus on the two material groups Lean duplex steel, and deformation-hardening austenitic steels. During and after the working visits at the receiving milieus Boel Wadman intends to publish academic articles with acknowledged researchers in order to qualify for Assistant Professor and obtain hands-on experience in tooling solutions for stainless stamping, which will increase her merits as an international project leader within the field. These merits will be used to work as a Senior Researcher at Swerea IVF with national and international research project management and Coordinator of the quality assurance of research methods at the institute.

Expected results and effects

There is great industrial need of recommendations for economic and efficient tooling solutions for advanced stainless steel materials that will be produced in increased tonnage by Outokumpu Stainless as a consequence of their recent large investment. This project intends to present solutions to this need, by; 1)Increasing the knowledge on how the deformation properties of the sheet metal affect the tool function 2)Collecting experimental data that, combined with theory, provide a background to wear models for prediction of tool function. The data will also be included in future industrial tooling guidelines for LDX and 1.4301. The project results: knowledge on parameters important to the tooling solutions, and guidelines of use to the industry, will help increasing the use of advanced stainless steel (LDX and 1.4310) within industry in several branches. The multidisciplinary cooperation between the four research environments will lead to increased understanding of the technical phenomena as well as of the methods and strengths of each environment. This will hopefully lead to prolonged contacts after the completion of this project. The partners have already expressed an interest in long-term cooperation within this field.

Planned approach and implementation

Boel Wadman will stay as a working guest during in total 14 months at the three receiving environments, planning and performing experiments on sheet metal properties during forming, surface and process aspects on tool wear and the influence of tool manufacturing. If necessary, experiments will also be performed in other laboratories in cooperation with the partners. The experimental data, together with earlier theoretical models developed by the partners will form the basis for improved models to predict tool wear during stainless stamping. Boel Wadman also plans to publish two scientific articles with each partner, and seek the meritation of Ass Prof (Docent) during the project. The teaching and pedagogic training for this meritation will be used to implement quality assurance workshops and guidelines for research methods at Swerea IVF. The results from the project will be transferred both by traditional academic means, during conferences and seminars, but also by user-friendly industrial guidelines and courses, in order to decrease the time to implementation.