In this paper, the effect of flow stress, friction, temperature, and velocity on finite element predictions of metal flow lines after cylindrical upsetting is presented. An actual three-stage hot forging process involving an upsetting step is utilized and experimental metal flow lines are measured to study the effect of the various process variables. It was found that temperature and velocity for reasonable values of friction have little influence on metal flow lines especially those located deep within the cylinder but that flow stress has a direct influence on the flow lines. It was shown that a pure power law material model cannot reflect the real flow stress of hot material because it underestimates the flow stress especially around the dead-metal zone for the upsetting of a cylindrical specimen. It is thus recommended that a proper lower limit of flow stress be assumed to alleviate this issue.

Multi-pass shape drawing is very important to produce steel profiles in round samples. In the current study, a process design system is developed for a multi-pass shape drawing. In general, the number of passes for a multi-pass shape drawing is 2 to 3 when the reduction ratio, drawing stress, and productivity are considered. Therefore, calculating the drawing stress and designing the intermediated die shapes are very important. In order to calculate the drawing stress, a shape drawing load prediction method is proposed using a general axisymmetric drawing load prediction model. An intermediate die shape design method is proposed using the initial and the final product shapes. Based on this analysis, a process design system is developed for multi-pass shape drawing for steel profiles. The system works with AutoCAD. The system was applied to design a shape drawing of a spline.

In order to prevent shape defects such as fluting and stretcher strains during press forming of aged low carbon steel sheets, roller leveling conditions for reducing yield point elongation were studied. Yield point elongations of leveled sheets were determined as a function of leveling, which is defined as the plastic fraction or the ratio of plastically deformed part in sheet thickness section to the whole thickness of the sheet. By adjusting this plastic fraction during leveling to more than 78%, yield point elongation in the leveled sheets was reduced so no fluting occurred during subsequent tangential bending. Stretcher strains can be avoided by leveling the sheet to an 84% plastic fraction condition.

The warm drawing of magnesium alloy AZ31B sheet is affected by temperature because tensile elongation is changed due to the elevated temperature. In the current study, the effect of temperature was investigated for an automotive dash panel part by both experimental and FE analysis. Tensile tests were performed to obtain mechanical properties for various temperatures. AZ31B alloy sheet shows increased total elongation with increasing deformation temperature in the range of 200 to 300℃. The heating channel inserted into the die was used to regulate and to obtain an optimal temperature. A temperature controller was constructed to reduce temperature variation. Warm drawing of magnesium alloy AZ31B was performed to produce the desired shape of the lightweight automotive dash panel. The simulated results showed good agreement with the experimental results.

Electric resistance spot welding has been used to join overlapped steel sheets in automotive bodies. Recently to reduce weight in automotive vehicles, non-ferrous metals are being used or considered in car bodies for hoods, trunk lids, doors parts, etc. Various welding processes such as laser welding, self-piercing rivet, friction stir welding are being used. In the current study, a new electric resistance heated friction stir spot welding is suggested for the spot welding of non-ferrous metals. The welding method can be characterized by three uses of heat -- electric resistance heating, friction stir heating and conduction heating of steel electrodes -- for the fusion joining at the interfacial zone between the two sheets. The welding process has variables such as welding current, diameter of the steel electrodes, revolutions per minute (rpm) of the friction stir pin, and the insert depth of the stir pin. In order to obtain the optimal welding variables, which provide the best welding strength, many experiments were conducted. From the experiments, it was found that the welding strength could be reached to the required production value by using an electrode diameter of 10mm, a current of 7.6kA, a stirring speed of 400rpm, and an insert depth of 0.8mm for the electric resistance heated friction stir spot welding of 5052 aluminum 1.5mm sheets.

In the current study, a method was proposed to quantitatively predict the wear and fatigue life of a shearing die in order to determine an effective replacement period for the die. The shearing die model of a retainer manufacturing process was used for the proposed method of quantitative life prediction. The retainer is produced through shearing steps, such as piercing and notching. The shearing die of the retainer is carefully controlled because the dimensional accuracy of the retainer is critical. The fatigue life for the shearing die was predicted using ANSYS considering S-N curves of STD11 and Gerber’s equation. The wear life for the shearing die was predicted using DEFORM-3D considering the Archard’s wear model. Experimental shearing of the retainer was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for predicting die life. The fatigue failure of the shearing die was macroscopically measured. The wear depth was measured using a 3D coordinate measuring machine. The results showed that the wear and fatigue life in the FE analysis agree well with the experimental results.

The characteristics of the laser metal deposition parameters were studied to enhance the deposition efficiency using a diode pumped disk laser. STD61 hot tool steel plate and Fe based AISI M2 alloy were used as a substrate and powder for the laser metal deposition, respectively. Among the laser metal deposition parameters the laser power, track pitch and powder feed rate were used to estimate the deposition efficiency. From the experimental results, the deposition efficiency was shown to be excellent when 1.8kW laser power 500um track pitch and 10g/min of the powder feed rate were used. For this optimal condition the average hardness of the deposition track was approximately 830HV, and this value is 30~50% better than the hardness of the commercially produced tool steel after heat treatment.

Hemming is used to connect two sheet metal components by folding the edge of an outer panel around an inner panel to create a smooth edge. The minimization of hemming defects is critical to the final quality of automobile products because hemming is one of the last operations during fabrication. Designing the hemmed part is not easy and is influenced by the geometry of the bent part. Therefore, the main problem for automotive parts is dimensional accuracy since formed products often deviate geometrically due to large springback. Few numerical approaches using 3-dimensional finite element model have been applied to hemming due to the small element size which is needed to properly capture the bending behavior of the sheet around small die corner and the comparatively big size of automotive opening parts, such as doors, hoods and deck lids. The current study concentrates on the 3-dimensional numerical simulation of hemming for an automotive door. The relationship between the design parameters of the hemming operation and the height difference defect is shown. Quality improvement of the automotive door can be increased through the study of model parameters.

The possibility of chemical precipitation for recycled ammonium paratungstate (APT) was studied. WO₃ particles were synthesized by chemical precipitation method using a 1:2 weight ratio of APT:DI-water. At the 500℃ sintering temperature, the X-ray diffraction results showed that APT completely decomposed to WO₃. For the granulated powder WC-Co, vacuum heat treatment at proper temperatures increases tap density and flow-ability. Hardness of the WC-Co thermal spray coating layer was measured in the range HV 831~1266. Spray conditions for the best characteristic values were an oxygen flow rate=1500 scfh, a fuel flow rate = 5.25gph and a gun distance = 320mm.

A safety vent is crucial to protect its user from unpredictable explosions caused by increasing internal pressure of the lithium-ion batteries. In order to prevent the explosion of the battery, a safety vent rupture is required when the internal pressure reaches a critical value. In conventional manufacturing, the cap plate and the safety vent are fabricated separately and subsequently welded to each other. In the current study, a manufacturing process including a backward extrusion and coining process is suggested to produce an integral safety vent which also has the benefit of increasing production efficiency. FE simulations were conducted to predict the rupture pressure and to design the safety vent using a ductile fracture criterion and the element deletion method. The critical value, C, in the ductile fracture criterion was obtained from uniaxial tensile tests with an annealed sheet of 1050-H14 aluminum alloy. Rupture tests were preformed to measure the rupture pressure of the safety vent. The results met the required rupture pressure within 8.5±0.5 kgf/cm². The simulation results were compared with experimental results, which showed that the predicted rupture pressures are in good agreement with experimentally measured ones with a maximum error of only 3.9%.