Characterization of ironing in the hole-flanging process of an aluminum alloy

Hole-flanging is a sheet metal forming process which is often used to produce a flange around holes. Many industrial applications require a longer flange that can be used for example to increase bearing surface or to increase the number of threads that will fit in a tapped hole. Ironing is usually used during such process to increase the flange height. Due to the thinning of the flange caused by edge stretching, some difficulties arise when trying to set a clearance value for which the process is performed with ironing. Therefore, the occurrence of ironing needs to be more clarified. It is also important to quantify the effect of ironing intensity in the flange geometry. In the present work, FE simulations and experiments are performed to investigate hole-flanging with and without ironing. For this purpose, hole-flanging is carried out by varying the clearance between the punch and the die while keeping constant the other parameters. The aim is to identify the occurrence of ironing by the determination of a limit between the hole-flanging with ironing and the hole-flanging without ironing. Attention is focused on studying the effect of the hole-flanging conditions on the punch load, the forming kinematics and the final shape. The experiments are carried out to check the FE results on an aluminum alloy.