Hole flanging with cold extrusion on sheet metals by FE simulation

Flange height and lip thickness are generally restricted by the formability of sheet metals in the conventional hole flanging operation. In the current work, cold extrusion was applied and a special forming die set was designed with a stripper subjected to counter-pressure with an aim to obtain a more substantial flange. FEM software DEFORM was utilized to simulate this flange extrusion process with two forming conditions: forming with a fixed die cavity and forming with the stripper subjected to counter-pressure. The results showed the cup preform tended to buckle on its bottom with insufficient counter-pressure. The cup preform would start extruding a flange when critical counter-pressure was reached. The magnitude of the critical counter-pressure increased in flange extrusion of smaller inner diameters. The corresponding overall forming load was greatly reduced as compared to flange extrusion with a fixed die cavity.