Sliding distance, contact pressure and wear in sheet metal stamping

This paper directly examines the contact sliding distance experienced during a typical sheet metal stamping process—an area that has largely been neglected in the literature. A method to numerically quantify the sliding distance is proposed. The sliding distance predicted from this method, and the contact pressure obtained from numerical simulation, allow the recently identified time-dependent contact conditions on the die and blank surfaces to be completely characterized. Consequently, a new insight into the wear/galling that occurs at the die radius in sheet metal stamping is gained. The results show that the region close to zero degrees on the die radius is likely to experience the most wear, with the identified transient stage contributing to a large proportion of the total wear. Additionally, the region on the blank surface often observed to be heavily burnished – the die impact line – is estimated to experience the highest wear severity due to the transient contact conditions. The proposed method to numerically quantify the sliding contact conditions can be applied as a general approach to study any other two-body sliding contact situations.