Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006) 18471851

Experimental and numerical studies of springback in air

v-bending process for cold rolled TRIP steels
Dongye Fei , Peter Hodgson
School of Engineering and Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, Vic. 3217, Australia
Received 26 July 2005; received in revised form 30 January 2006; accepted 30 January 2006

Abstract
In this investigation, attention is focused on the springback behavior of cold rolled transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) steels in air v-bending
process. Experimental studies were carried out on the TRIP steels with various thicknesses and the geometric parameters affecting springback
were identified. The change in Youngs modulus in simple tension is experimentally investigated and by using the experimentally derived Youngs
modulus, the air v-bending process is simulated by the implicit finite element method (FEM) code Abaqus/Standard using user subroutine USDFLD.
It is shown that, for a better accuracy in v-bending, the change in Youngs modulus due to plastic deformation should be taken into consideration.
In addition, the influence of friction coefficient on springback in the v-bending simulation is also studied.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction transformation is accompanied by a volume expansion (Bleck,

Springback is generally defined as the additional deformation
of a structural component, after the removal of forming loads.
It is agreed in the literature that the three main variables that
influence springback are the geometry, manufacturing process
and blank material. Because of the extensive applications of high
strength steels, the significance of springback related problems
has increased (Zhang and Shi, 1999).
Newly developed TRIP steels have an excellent combina-
tion of high strength and good ductility, which results from the
transformation of retained austenite to martensite during cold
forming. It is reported that the austenite to martensite transfor-
mation starts when the stress exceeds the transformation barrier
of about 200 MPa (Kulp et al., 2002) and the retained austen-
ite is less stable under tensile loading than under compressive
loading (Savrai and Pychmintsev, 2002). In addition, the trans-
formation behavior is also related to temperature and strain rate
(Iwamoto and Tomita, 2001; Wei and Fu, 2002). Compared with
the austenite, the martensite has higher strength, higher hard-
ness and lower ductility, and besides, the austenite to martensite
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 5227 3360; fax: +61 3 5227 2167.
E-mail address: dyf@deakin.edu.au (D. Fei).
2002). Because of the high strength, the multiphase microstruc-
ture and the transformation during forming, TRIP steels show
high work hardening and springback (Wesemann and Greisert,
2001).
Recently, numerical simulations using the finite element
method (FEM) have been widely used to predict springback.
However, due to the special feature of TRIP steels, very low
precision can be found in FEM for springback simulation
(Wesemann and Greisert, 2001; Hinsinger and Zwilling, 2002).
It is common knowledge that Youngs modulus is an important
parameter in a plastic-hardening model. The literature shows
that the value of Youngs modulus of low alloyed TRIP steels
varies after some plastic deformation, therefore, considering
the change of Youngs modulus of TRIP steels can increase
the springback simulation accuracy (Boudeau et al., 2004). In
this paper, the variation in Youngs modulus of the TRIP steels
was experimentally investigated. Also, the air v-bending pro-
cess was adopted to study the influence of geometric parame-
ters considered (die gap (w), punch radius (RP ), punch veloc-
ity (VP )) and blank thickness (t) on springback. On the other
hand, a 3D numerical simulation using the implicit FEM code
Abaqus/Standard was conducted in the current work to under-
stand the factors that affect the accuracy of springback prediction
in the air v-bending process.

0029-5493/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2006.01.016
1848 D. Fei, P. Hodgson / Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006) 18471851

Table 1
Chemical composition of TRIP steels, in wt%
C Mn Si Al Cr

T1.2 0.095 1.46 1.68 0.029 0.017

T1.45 0.091 1.40 1.67 0.024 0.022
T1.6 0.101 1.42 1.80 0.024 0.023

Fig. 2. Illustration of v-free bending.

Mechanical properties of the TRIP steels used here are shown

Fig. 1. Microstructures of the TRIP steels by tint-etching.
2. Experimental work
Cold rolled TRIP steels with different thickness (1.2, 1.45
and 1.6 mm) are studied here and according to the thickness,
they are named T1.2, T1.45 and T1.6, respectively. The chemi-
cal composition of the TRIP steels is shown in Table 1. In view
of their chemical composition, the TRIP steel is representative
of conventional CMnSi TRIP steels. For phase identification, the
color metallographic technique has been developed and applied
to assess the microstructures of the TRIP steels. The un-mounted
sample is polished and etched with 2% nital for about 15 s. After
that, the sample is heated in a furnace at 260 C for 3.5 h in air,
without protective atmosphere and cooled to room temperature.
With this technique the various phases appear as different col-
ors under the microscope: bainite (B) and ferrite (F) are beige,
retained austenite (R ) is purple and martensite (M) is dark blue.
Because of the similar chemical composition, the TRIP steels
show analogous microstructures, see Fig. 1. With regard to the
measurement of phase areas, the TRIP steels contain approx-
imate 83% bainite and ferrite, 14% retained austenite and 3%
martensite. For the CMnSi TRIP steels, it is reported that vol-
ume fraction of the retained austenite (13%) decreases to be zero
when the equivalent strain is added up to 0.85 (Yu and Meyer,
2002).
in Table 2. It shows that the strength decreases, while the duc-
tility and the Youngs modulus increase with increase of the
thickness. The influence of thickness on strength and ductility
can be explained by the grain size of bainite and ferrite and the
amount of retained austenite and martensite in the microstruc-
ture (Jacobs and Martnez, 2002). As for the Youngs modulus,
it is related to the rolling reduction rate. For TRIP steels, it
is reported that Youngs modulus decreases by 12% when the
thickness is reduced from 1.44 to 1.10 mm by rolling (Boudeau
et al., 2004).
The air v-bending tests are conducted on an instrumented
100 kN Instron machine with the v free bending tool shown in
Fig. 2. This machine is speed controlled from 0.1 to 500 mm/min
by a desktop computer. The precision of punch force and dis-
placement is 2.5 N and 0.001 mm, respectively. The geomet-
ric parameters involved are:
die radius (Rd ): 2 mm
die gap (w): 10, 15, 20 and 25 mm
punch radius (RP ): 1, 2, 3 and 4 mm
punch velocity (VP ): 1, 10 and 100 mm/min
The die length is 60 mm and strips of the TRIP steel 90 mm
long and 15 mm wide are cut along the rolling direction. No
lubricant is used in the bending process. The arms of the bend are
free to swivel about the point of sheet contact with the die radius
as the bending progressed. The springback angle
is measured
by the difference between bending angle and unbending angle
 (
=  ).
As shown in Fig. 3, the TRIP steel specimens with 25 mm
gauge long and 6 mm wide are employed to undertake the cyclic
tensile tests on a tensilecompressive test machine with a max-
imum capacity of 100 kN. The evolution of Youngs modulus
with plastic deformation has been measured using strain gauges
during loadingunloading cycles along the rolling direction. All

Table 2
Mechanical values of the TRIP steels
TRIP steels Thickness (mm) YS (MPa) UTS (MPa) ATotal (%) Youngs modulus (GPa)

T1.2 1.2 455470 860883 2325 198

T1.45 1.45 420438 795803 2627 207
T1.6 1.6 405410 745760 2931 215
 D. Fei, P. Hodgson / Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006) 18471851
Fig. 3. Geometry of cyclic tensile test specimen.
specimens are strained with 1% elongation control and the strain
rate is 0.0007 s1 . The Youngs modulus is calculated by the 10
and 30% of the peak stress and strain in loading process for every
cycle.
3. Results and discussion
Figs. 4 and 5 show the influence of the blank thickness and
the die gap on springback angles in the air v-bending tests. It
can be seen that these two factors have a significant influence
on springback, that is, the springback angles increase with the
decreasing of blank thickness while the increasing of die gap.
In this study, the ratio of the punch radius to the sheet thickness
(RP /t) is less than 4 and the v-bending process is just the same
as the beginning of the v-die air bending described in reference
(Asnafi, 2000). Therefore, the springback in the present air v-
Fig. 4. Influence of blank thickness on springback angle.
Fig. 5. Influence of die gap on springback angle.
1849
Fig. 6. Evolution of the Youngs modulus in a uniaxial test for the TRIP steels.
bending can be theoretically calculated as following:

3K (1 2 )(1+4t/w)
= (1)
Et
where K is the ultimate tensile strength, the position of the
neutral axial, the Poissons ratio, w the die gap, E the Youngs
modulus and t is the thickness.
The equation can be used to explain the reason that the thinner
blank thickness and the wider die gap, the higher springback
angles. The punch radius cannot influence the springback, which
is because the punch radius from 1 to 4 mm could not obviously
affect the position of the neutral axial, . In addition, the punch
velocity from 1 to 100 mm/min should not affect the ultimate
tensile strength, K significantly since the strain rate is small in
the velocity range (from 0.0007 to 0.07 s1 ).
The evolution of Youngs modulus calculated during the load-
ing process of all the TRIP steels are shown in Fig. 6. The
microstructure of the TRIP steels shows that the percentage of
the retained austenite decreases from 13 to 4% when the prestrain
increases from 0 to 20%. It is reported that the Youngs modulus
of -martensite has a value of approximately only 10% in com-
parison to the ferritic or austenitic matrix (Kulp et al., 2002).
Therefore, it can be seen that there is a continuous decrease of
Youngs modulus with increasing pre-strain for the TRIP steels
and the relationship can be described by linear equations. Such
as the T1.45, it is as following:
E = 201 105 (GPa) (2)
4. Numerical simulation
To demonstrate the predictability of the springback for the
TRIP steel, an implicit FEM package Abaqus/Standard is used
to simulate the air v-bending process. In the current work, only
the T1.45 is analyzed and the pertinent geometric parameters are:
die gap w = 15 mm; punch radius RP = 2 mm; punch velocity
VP = 10 mm/min.
1850 D. Fei, P. Hodgson / Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006) 18471851
Fig. 7. Comparison of punch force vs. displacement for experimental and numer-
ical results.
The work pieces in all of the forming processes are assumed
to be a continuous body, which means the body does not con-
tain any empty space or void. In addition, the work pieces are
assumed to be isotropic and homogeneous. This assumption
means the material properties do not vary with direction or orien-
tation and the homogeneous material has identical properties at
all points. To investigate the influence of various Youngs modu-
lus on springback simulation results, an implicit FEM package,
ABAQUS/Standard using the implicit user subroutine USDFLD
is implemented to simulate both the forming and springback pro-
cesses. The eight node 3D linear brick and reduced integration
continuum element C3D8R is employed in the analysis. Two
rigid surfaces were used to simulate the punch and die because
they are very stiff components. Only one half of the geometry
need be modeled due to symmetry.
It has been experimentally verified that the Youngs modu-
lus will decrease with the pre-strain ratio, but in most studies on
springback, the variation is neglected and the Youngs modulus is
calculated as a constant. In this study, both the constant and vary-
ing Youngs modulus are used in the simulations. The constant
Youngs modulus is calculated from tensile tests (E0 = 201 GPa),
and the varying Youngs modulus is the E, as shown in
Eq. (2).
Fig. 7 illustrates the punch forces comparison between the
experimental results and the simulated results (with varying and
constant Youngs modulus) during bending and springback pro-
Fig. 9. Influence of Youngs modulus (a) and friction coefficient (b) on springback angle in simulation and comparison with the experimental results.
Fig. 8. Influence of friction coefficient on punch force and the comparison with
experimental results.
cess. It can be seen that both the simulated punch forces are
generally smaller than the experimental results except at the
start of the bending process, while the reverse effect is observed
during unloading process. In addition, the varying Youngs mod-
ulus does not influence the punch force during bending process,
while it significantly affects the punch displacement,
l, dur-
ing the unloading process and the punch force with the varying
Youngs modulus matches the practical results better. One of the
reasons that the predicted punch force is smaller than the actual
during the bending process is perhaps the influence of friction.
As shown in Fig. 8, with increase in the friction coefficient, the
punch forces increase during the bending process (especially
after the punch displacement is more than 2 mm approximately),
while it decreases during the unloading process. Furthermore,
the punch displacement,
l, is not affected by the friction coef-
ficient and in other words, the friction coefficient does not affect
the springback angle.
Fig. 9 exhibits the influence of Youngs modulus and friction
coefficient on springback angles in simulation. As mentioned
above, the prediction with varying Youngs modulus is in good
agreement with the experiments and the prediction accuracy is
improved significantly, while the friction coefficient (with the
varying Youngs modulus) does not influence the springback
angles in the air v-bending.
 D. Fei, P. Hodgson / Nuclear Engineering and Design 236 (2006) 18471851
5. Conclusion
Springback for TRIP steels depends strongly on the blank
thickness and die gap, while the influence of punch radius
and punch velocity on springback is negligible.
The decrease in Youngs modulus during deformation is
experimentally shown. Allowing for the variation in Youngs
modulus with plastic pre-strain gives better correlation
between numerical analysis for the springback simulation and
experimental results. Therefore, it is advisable to take into
account the variation of Youngs modulus for TRIP steels in
springback simulation.
Simulation results show that friction coefficient can influence
the punch force, while it does not influence the springback
angle in the air v-bending process.
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