Paperboard Forming - Specifics Compared to Sheet Metal Forming

Growing demand for sustainable products has led to increased interest in the use of paperboard as a structural material. Paperboard products are almost exclusively manufactured by embossing, pulp molding, and bending processes. Other well-known forming methods, such as deep or stretch drawing, are only rarely applied to paperboard. This is primarily ascribed to the lack of knowledge concerning the process design and limits when paperboard is employed. In the present work, the applicability of well-established design strategies and characterization methods for metals to paperboard is investigated. Therefore, forming limit diagrams for paperboard are determined in a first step. Additionally, significant material parameters are identified in order to describe the material influence upon the forming limit. Furthermore, the influence of a hydrostatic counter pressure onto the forming limit is investigated. To predict the forming behaviour of a complex formed paperboard demonstration part, a numerical model of a hydroforming process is set up, executed, and validated.