Investigation on compression-springback performance of the SUS301 stainless steel gasket considering the residual stress

In order to accurately and economically predict the sealing performance of a novel metal gasket, a virtual full -cycle testing method for metal gaskets based on ABAQUS software is proposed which integrates the gasket stamping, springback and compression-springback steps. The parameters of Hill'48 anisotropic yield model are obtained for the 0.2 mm thickness SUS301 stainless steel sheet using the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) tech-nique. The influence of residual stress generated through forming on the later compression-springback perfor-mance is considered during the simulation analysis. The accuracy of the virtual testing method has been verified by comparing the simulation results with the experimental ones. The compression-springback performance of the SUS301 stainless steel half-bead gasket is investigated systematically through this virtual testing method. The virtual experiments are conducted to test the compression-springback behaviors of half-bead gaskets of different sizes. The effect of the geometrical parameters of the stamping die and the compression load on the compression-springback performance are discussed in detail. The results demonstrate that the optimal compression rate and the springback rate of the metal gasket can be obtained by adjusting the geometric parameters W (the width of the die) and H (the height of the die) appropriately under different loads. The primary motivation for proposing this method is to improve the numerical simulation accuracy of the compression-springback performance of the metal gasket, and thereby to replace the costly performance tests by the virtual experiments.