A Refined Friction Modeling for Lubricated Metal Forming Process

In spite of the existence of a well-developed realistic friction model, it has only been applied to the simple geometric problems, such as the axisymmetric and plane strain conditions, where the formulations of lubricant transport can be decomposed into two characteristic equations. Accordingly, a unified procedure of combining the current lubrication/friction model and finite element code of metal forming has been developed in this article for either steady or unsteady three-dimensional process including both axisymmetric and plane strain cases. In the part of the lubrication analysis, a finite element method is derived for the average Reynolds equation that is appropriated for 3-D metal forming process, and regardless of whether the tooling/workpiece surfaces are in contact or not. With regard to the theory of asperity contact, in addition to the well-known smoothing and roughening effects, significant deformation of asperities could be caused by the elastic microwedges on the tool surface. The availability of the new friction model was proved by a published problem and an axisymmetric stretch forming process was therefore adopted as a benchmark. Numerical results showed that the present analysis provides a good agreement with the measured strain distributions.