Prediction of earing in deep drawing of anisotropic aluminum alloy sheet using BBC2003 yield criterion

This paper investigates the earing phenomenon in deep drawing of AA3105 aluminum alloy, experimentally and numerically. Earing defect is mainly attributed to the plastic anisotropy of sheet metal. In order to control such defect, predicting the evolution of ears in sheet metal forming analyses becomes indispensable. In this regard, the present study implements the advanced yield criterion BBC2003. Based on this yield function and the associated flow rule of plasticity, the constitutive model is derived. Accordingly, a user material VUMAT subroutine is developed and adopted in the commercial finite element software ABAQUS/Explicit. Several plane stress loading problems are designed, through which, the accuracy of the developed subroutine is verified. In addition, cylindrical cups of AA3105 aluminum alloy are fabricated using a deep drawing die. The earing defect was clearly observed on the recovered parts. Using the experimentally obtained constants of BBC2003 yield criterion for this alloy in VUMAT, deep drawing of the cylindrical cups was simulated. The results demonstrate that the earing profile can successfully be predicted using BBC2003 yield function.