Patent ID: 6731996
Filing Date: 2004-05-04
Classification: C21D,C22F,G06F

Abstract:
A method of fabricating an article, comprising the steps of:creating a blank of material having anisotropic mechanical properties; constructing tooling for an article by predicting flow and deformation of the blank using an analysis which decouples the anisotropic deformation properties of the blank; and forming the article from the blank using the tooling, and wherein the blank is generally flat and is formed from rolled sheet, and wherein the sheet also has anisotropic mechanical properties, and wherein the sheet is a metal sheet, and the analysis of said constructing step includes the further step of calculating the response of a small amount of the blank using crystal plasticity theory, and wherein the analysis of said constructing step includes the further steps of representing the blank and the tooling by meshes having a plurality of elements; defining a set of stress-strain curves depending on the anisotropy of the blank using a crystal plasticity, material point simulator; assigning an appropriate stress-strain curve from such set to each element of the blank, said stress-strain curve lies between an upper bound curve and a lower bound curve; and carrying-out finite element analysis to simulate the forming of the article and its performance after forming.