Characterization of the Fracture Forming Limits by Radial Extrusion

This paper introduces a new formability test based on double-action radial extrusion to characterize material formability in the three-dimensional to plane-stress material flow transitions that are found in bulk metal-formed parts. The presentation draws from a multidirectional tool, which was designed to convert the vertical press stroke into horizontal movement of the compression punches towards each other, aspects of experimental strain determination, fractography, and finite element analysis. Results show that three-dimensional to plane-stress material flow transitions at the radially extruded flanges lead to different modes of fracture (by tension and by shear) that may or may not be preceded by necking, such as in sheet metal forming. The new formability test also reveals adequate characteristics to characterize the failure limits of very ductile wrought and additively manufactured metallic materials, which cannot be easily determined by conventional upset compression tests, and to facilitate the identification of the instant of cracking and of the corresponding fracture strains by combination of the force vs. time evolutions with the in-plane strains obtained from digital image correlation.