Compensating springback in the automotive practice using MASHAL

New materials are used in the automotive industry to reduce weight and to improve crash performance. These materials feature a higher ratio of yield stress to elastic modulus leading to increased springback after tool release. The resulting shape deviations and their efficient reduction is of major interest for the automotive industry nowadays. The usual strategies for springback reduction can diminish springback to a certain amount only. In order to reduce the remaining shape deviation a mathematical compensation algorithm is presented. The objective is to obtain the tool geometry such that the part springs back into the right shape after releasing the tools. In practice the process of compensation involves different tasks beginning with CAD construction of the part, planning the drawing method and tool construction, FE-simulation, deep drawing at try-out stage and measurement of the manufactured part. Thus the compensation can not be treated as an isolated task but as a process with various restrictions and requirements of today’s automotive practice. For this reason a software prototype for compensation methods MASHAL – meaning program to maintain accuracy (MASsHALtigkeit) – was developed. The basic idea of compensation with MASHAL is the transfer and application of shape deviations between two different geometries on a third one. The developed algorithm allows for an effective processing of these data, an approximation of springback and shape deviations and for a smooth extrapolation onto the tool geometry. Following topics are addressed: positioning of parts, global compensation and restriction of compensation to local areas, damping of the compensation function in the blank holder domain, simulation and validation of springback and compensation of CAD-data. The complete compensation procedure is illustrated on an industrial part.