Material modelling for creep-age forming of aluminium alloy 7B04

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the creep-ageing behaviour of a peak-aged aluminium alloy 7B04 under different tensile loads at 115oC and subsequently modelling it for creep-age forming (CAF) applications. Mechanical properties and microstructural evolutions of creep-aged specimens were investigated. The material was modelled using a set of unified constitutive equations, which not only captures the material's creep deformation but also takes into account yield strength contributions from solid solution hardening, age hardening and dislocation hardening during creep-ageing. A possible application of the present work is demonstrated by implementing the determined material model into a commercial finite element analysis solver via a user-defined subroutine for springback prediction of creep-age formed plates. A good agreement is observed between the simulated springback values and experimental results. This material model now enables further investigations of 7B04 under various CAF scenarios to be conducted inexpensively via computational modelling.