A simple model to simulate electromagnetic sheet free bulging process

J.P.M. Correia
a,
, M.A. Siddiqui
a,b
, S. Ahzi
a
, S. Belouettar
b
, R. Davies
c
a
I.M.F.S.UMR 7507, Universite Louis Pasteur, 2 rue Boussingault, 67000 Strasbourg, France
b
L.T.I., C.R.P. Henri Tudor, 29 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 LuxembourgKirchberg, Luxembourg
c
Pacic Northwest National Laboratory, PO Box 999, MSIN P8-35, Richland, WA 99352, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 7 January 2008
Received in revised form
29 July 2008
Accepted 28 August 2008
Available online 24 September 2008
Keywords:
Electromagnetic sheet forming
Finite elements
Free bulging
Viscoplasticity
a b s t r a c t
Electromagnetic sheet forming is a high-velocity forming process driven by the coupled electromagnetic
and mechanical phenomena. The deformation of the workpiece is governed by the body forces (Lorentz
forces) that results from a pulsed magnetic eld produced by a at spiral coil. Formability can be
increased using this high-velocity forming technique due to the inertial forces and high strain rates. In
this study, we consider the electromagnetic and the mechanical aspect of the process as two
independent problems. The nite difference method has been employed to solve the electromagnetic
equations. The pressure acting on the sheet and due to the Lorentz forces is estimated neglecting
the inuence of the sheet velocity on the magnetic eld. Then it has been treated as a load in the
mechanical problem. Numerical simulations of the mechanical problem have been performed with the
commercial nite element code ABAQUS/Explicit. The magnetic pressure has been introduced in
ABAQUS/Explicit as an analytical pressure distribution. The general objective of this study is to better
understand the complex phenomenon of deformation and the inuence of viscoplastic material
behaviour during the simulation of a free bulging electromagnetic sheet forming process.
& 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In electromagnetic forming (EMF), a magnetic eld forces a
workpiece into desired shapes. Electromagnetic forming (i.e. EMF)
is also known as magnetic pulse forming. Metal workpieces that
are good conductor of electricity are deformed through applying a
pressure generated by an intense transient magnetic eld. It is one
of the most commonly applied high-speed forming technique. In
EMF, a signicant amount of electrical energy is stored in a bank
of capacitors which are suddenly discharged releasing all the
stored energy. This electrical discharge current runs through a coil
which generates an intense transient magnetic eld around it. At
the same time this magnetic eld penetrates into the electrically
conductive workpiece placed in the vicinity and induces transient
eddy current. The two currents running in the opposite direction
prevent the further penetration of the magnetic eld into the
workpiece and a large magnitude magnetic repulsion force is
created between the coil and the workpiece. This magnetic
repulsion between both currents is used to launch the workpiece
at very high speeds and to obtain the desired shape on it.
Operations of at sheet metal deformation, ring compression,
expansion and assembly are made possible using this technology.
A comprehensive review and assessment of the EMF process is
presented in Ref. [1]. Since the EMF process takes place at very
high deformation velocity and without mechanical contacts
between the tool and the metal piece, it can improve the forming
limits of metal sheets [2] and can reduce phenomena like
springback and wrinkling [3].
During the past few years, several numerical studies have been
performed for the EMF process in which a few were related to the
sheet EMF process. Early work by Takatsu et al. [4] described the
basic equations to simulate the electromagnetic free bulging of a
at sheet. Circuit analysis, electromagnetic eld and dynamic
plastic deformation equations of the workpiece were used in Ref.
[4]. An axi-symmetric conguration for the numerical solution
has been used for both workpiece and coil. Furthermore, in their
numerical approach, Takatsu et al. [4] considered the interaction
between the magnetic eld and the evolution of the workpiece
shape. Takatsu et al. [4] carried out both experimental and
numerical study on the electromagnetic free bulging of at sheet
metal using a 5 turn at spiral coil. The numerical results of
Takatsu et al. [4] were in good agreement with their experimental
ones. More recently, Fenton and Daehn [5] developed a bi-
dimensional nite difference code named CALE to numerically
simulate EMF process with a fully electromagneticmechanical
coupling. The CALE code is an Arbitrary LangragianEulerian
hydrodynamics computer code. Fenton and Daehn [5] used their
code to simulate the free bulging electromagnetic sheet process
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International Journal of Mechanical Sciences
0020-7403/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2008.08.008

Corresponding author. Tel.: +33390242954; fax: +33388614300.

E-mail address: pedro@imfs.u-strasbg.fr (J.P.M. Correia).
International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475
proposed in Ref. [4]. Fenton and Daehn [5] had a fairly good
agreement between their prediction and the experimental results
of Takatsu et al. [4]. However, Fenton and Daehn [5] employed a
hardening law independent of strain rate. A state-of-art on
modelling the EMF process is discussed in Ref. [6]. El-Azab et al.
[6] proposed a mathematical framework to simulate EMF process.
With the development of commercial nite element codes,
another approach has been proposed by Oliveira et al. [7]. They
developed a loosely coupled model to simulate sheet EMF
process. In Ref. [7], a three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic
nite element analysis is combined with a structural nite
element code to simulate the thermo-mechanical behaviour of
the metal sheet. The commercial multi-physics nite element
code ANSYS is employed to solve the transient electromagnetic
phenomena occurring in the EMF process. The commercial explicit
dynamic nite element code LS-DYNA is used to model the
3D-mechanical behaviour of the sheet. An interface has been
developed by Oliveira et al. [7] to allow the introduction, at small
intervals, of electromagnetic force data from ANSYS in the
structural code LS-DYNA. The predicted deformed shape of
the sheet obtained with LS-DYNA is then used to update the
electromagnetic model in ANSYS. More sophisticated nite
element codes have been developed. Based on the work of
Svendsen and Chanda [8], Stiemer et al. [9] proposed a fully
coupled model to simulate the EMF process. The loosely coupled
model or the fully coupled allows accurate simulations of the
EMF sheet process. But more simple models also give ne results
[10,11]. In these simple models, the EMF sheet process is treated
as two independent problems: an electromagnetic problem and a
mechanical problem. For instance, in the work of Imbert et al. [10],
the magnetic pressure distribution has been estimated from the
analytical work of Al-Hassani [12] and it is used as a load in the
mechanical problem. The mechanical problem is then solved
using a commercial nite element code. With this simple model,
the nite element simulations performed by Imbert et al. [10] are
in agreement with the experimental results.
In agreement with Imbert et al. [10], we have decided to
consider the electromagnetic and the mechanical aspects of the
process as two independent problems. The EMF test studied in
this paper is the free bulging electromagnetic sheet process
proposed in Ref. [4]. The axi-symmetric conguration has been
assumed to model the EMF test. The circuit parameters such as
resistance, inductance and temporal distribution of the discharge
current have been analytically calculated. Then using these inputs,
the electromagnetic elds, the body forces (Lorentz forces) and
the magnetic pressure have been computed. The magnetic
pressure has been estimated neglecting the inuence of the sheet
velocity on the magnetic eld, but taking into account the
interaction between the magnetic eld and the evolution of the
workpiece shape. For this purpose, a nite difference code has
been written and has been validated from the experimental
results [4]. This code calculated the magnetic pressure acting on
the sheet metal workpiece and has been introduced via a
user subroutine VDLOAD. Numerical simulations of the mechan-
ical problem have been performed with the commercial nite
element code ABAQUS/Explicit. The nite element predictions
have been compared with experimental results available in
literature [4].
2. Estimation of pressure acting on metal sheet
2.1. Electromagnetic model
In this section, an analytical approach based on the work of
Takatsu et al. [4] is developed to estimate the pressure acting on
the sheet during an electromagnetic sheet forming operation. The
difference between the work of Takatsu et al. [4] and our work is
that we have neglected the sheet velocity in the Maxwells
equation. In fact, Manea et al. [13] carried out a numerical study
that dealt with the effects of the velocity during the EMF process.
In this work, the results of Maxwells equation obtained with a
stationary media are compared with these obtained with
a moving media. Numerical results from the calculations of
Ref. [13] for different velocities (10
3
, 10
5
, and 10
7
m/s) suggest that
the electromagnetic eld in a moving media varies very less as
compared to the magnetic eld in the stationary media. The
difference is only signicant for very high velocities (of the
order of 10
7
m/s). It is also observed that this difference in the
magnitude of electromagnetic eld decreases with the short
process time. The velocity of the workpiece attained during
the EMF process still remain under the limit of 10
3
m/s and the
EMF process takes place in an interval of few micro seconds,
which is far less than the values for which the effects
of the motion of the workpiece on the magnetic eld are
noticeable. Manea et al. [13] concluded that for an EMF
process the calculations for the electromagnetic eld in stationary
media may be considered as good approximation of electro-
magnetic eld acting on the moving workpiece. That is the reason
why, in agreement with Ref. [13], we have assumed that the
sheet velocity has no inuence on the magnetic eld. Due to
symmetry of the free bulging electromagnetic process, an
axi-symmetric conguration for the numerical solution has been
used for both workpiece and coil. Consequently, the magnetic eld
and then the magnetic pressure acting on the sheet do not vary in
the circumferential direction. Furthermore, the at spiral coil used
in Ref. [4] is considered to be consisting of ve elementary loops
of concentric circle, each of which is carrying the discharge
current.
For this model, which is basically a simple approach towards
solving the electromagnetic problem for EMF, the interaction
between displacing workpiece and magnetic eld density is
neglected. We assumed that for EMF process that takes place in
a very small interval of time, the inductance can be considered to
be constant [14]. This results in a constant mutual inductance
between the moving workpiece and coil, throughout the deforma-
tion of the workpiece.
Neglecting the variations of the mutual inductance during the
forming operation [14,15], the discharged current owing in the
at spiral coil is approximately described by the following
equation:
It I
0
e
t=t
sin ot (1)
where I
0
represents the maximum intensity of the discharge
current, t the damping coefcient of the circuit (it characterizes
the exponential decreasing of the current) and o the angular
frequency. The maximum intensity of the current I
0
is dened as
I
0
V

C
L

(2)
where V represents the initial voltage stored in the capacitor bank,
L the total inductance of the circuit, and C the total capacitance of
the circuit. The damping coefcient t is obtained using
t 2
L
R
(3)
where R represents the total resistance of the circuit. The circuit
parameters dened above have been calculated using the
characteristics of the electric circuit presented in Ref. [4]. For
the initial charging voltage of 6kV, the values of circuit
parameters in Eq. (1) have then been taken equal to: I
0
22.42kA,
o 9.3410
4
rad/s and t 2.4210
4
s. The evolution of the
ARTICLE IN PRESS
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1467
intensity of the discharge current, for the initial charging voltage
of 6kV, owing through the coil is presented in Fig. 1. For the EMF
process, the primary circuit discharge current is a damped
harmonic sinusoidal function. The peak value of the current
occurs during the rst half cycle. The discharge current reaches its
rst positive peak, almost 17.5ms the current subsequently is
damped to much lower values. This indicates that the effects of
the mutual inductance between the workpiece and coil current
last for a very small interval. This strengthens our assumption for
the constant inductance, the effects of the mutual inductance may
be considered to be of very minute nature, and the deformation of
the workpiece takes place mostly because of the inertial forces
and high deformation velocities.
Propagation of electromagnetic eld within a coilworkpiece
air system can be dened by quasi-stationary Maxwells equation.
These are a set of differential equations involving the basic
parameters of an electromagnetic circuit. Since the process is
considered to be quasi-stationary, the velocity term does not
affect the magnetic eld during the process. In accordance with
Ref. [4], a cylindrical coordinate system is applied for the circular
disk, thus the magnetic eld density B possesses a radial
component B
r
and an axial component B
z
which are given as
follows:

1
m
0
s
w
q
2
qr
2

1
r
q
qr

q
2
qz
2

1
r
2

B
r

qB
r
qt
0

1
m
0
s
w
q
2
qr
2

1
r
q
qr

q
2
qz
2

B
z

qB
z
qt
0 (4)
where s
w
is the conductivity of the workpiece, m
0
the void
permeability and t denes the time.
In axi-symmetric assumption, the eddy current has only a
circumferential component which is given by
J
y

1
m
0
qB
r
qz

qB
z
qr

(5)
Lorentz force density has a radial and an axial component as
f
r
J
y
B
z
f
z
J
y
B
r
(6)
And the corresponding magnetic pressures are evaluated by
integration and are dened by
P
r

zh
z0
f
r
dz
P
z

zh
z0
f
z
dz (7)
where h is the thickness of the sheet.
Boundary conditions for Eq. (4) are based on the continuity of
the magnetic ux density B at the boundaries of sheet. At the
bottom surface of the disk, the magnetic eld B is a sum of the coil
eld B
0
and the magnetic eld B
1
generated by the eddy currents
owing through the sheet. At the top surface of the sheet, the
magnetic eld B is equal to zero. The boundary conditions can
then be written as follows:
B B
0
B
1
at z d
g
u
2
t
B 0 at z d
g
u
2
t h
(8)
where u
2
(t) is the vertical deection of the sheet and d
g
the
initial gap between the coil and the sheet. To calculate
the magnetic elds B
0
and B
1
, the workpiece and the coil
have been divided in elementary circular loops. If the
current I(t) and the eddy current J
y
are known, the magnetic
elds B
0
and B
1
can be determined from summing all the
contributions of each elementary loop. More details for the
calculation of the magnetic elds B
0
and B
1
can be found in
Appendix A.
2.2. Finite difference method
To develop a nite difference scheme, we have rst con-
structed a grid as show in Fig. 2. The metal sheet is then
discretized into cells of size Dr Dh to form a uniform grid, where
a grid point M(i,j) can be dened by the following cylindrical
coordinates:
r
j
; z
i
jDr; iDh with 0pipn and 0pjpm (9)
where Dr R/m is the radius increment and Dh h/n the
thickness increment. Taking into account the discretization of
the problem presented in Fig. 2, the spatial derivatives are
approximated by second-order central nite differences
q
qr
B
r
%
B
r
i; j 1 B
r
i; j 1
2Dr
q
qr
B
r
%
B
r
i; j 1 B
r
i; j 1
2Dr
(10)
The derivatives with respect to z-coordinate are similarly
constructed as in Eq. (10). For the time derivative there are
several possibilities to express in terms of nite difference
approximation. In this work, we have decided to use the Euler
backward explicit scheme given by
qB
r
qt

k
%
B
k1
r
i; j B
k
r
i; j
Dt
(11)
where Dt is the time increment. It has been noted that for the
explicit scheme, the solution is not stable. It is necessary to
determine the maximum time increment. With the help of
Eqs. (10) and (11), the Maxwell equations (Eq. (4)) are discretized
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Fig. 1. Evolution of the intensity of the discharge current owing through the at
spiral coil.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1468
as follows:
1
m
0
s
w
B
k
r
i; j 1 2B
k
r
i; j B
k
r
i; j 1
Dr
2

1
jDr
B
k
r
i; j 1 B
k
r
i; j 1
2Dr

B
k
r
i 1; j 2B
k
r
i; j B
k
r
i 1; j
Dh
2

B
k
r
i; j
jDr
2

B
k1
r
i; j B
k
r
i; j
Dt
(12)
and
1
m
0
s
w
B
k
z
i; j 1 2B
k
z
i; j B
k
z
i; j 1
Dr
2

1
jDr
B
k
z
i; j 1 B
k
z
i; j 1
2Dr

B
k
z
i 1; j 2B
k
z
i; j B
k
z
i 1; j
Dh
2

B
k1
z
i; j B
k
z
i; j
Dt
. (13)
Rewriting the above equations, we can then obtain the
expressions of the two components of magnetic eld B
r
and B
z
B
k1
r
i; j 1
Dt
m
0
s
w
2
Dr
2

2
De
2

1
jDr
2

B
k
r
i; j

Dt
m
0
s
w
B
k
r
i; j 1 B
k
r
i; j 1
Dr
2
2j 1
2j

B
k
r
i 1; j B
k
r
i 1; j
Dh
2

(14)
and
B
k1
z
i; j 1
Dt
m
0
s
w
2
Dr
2

2
De
2

B
k
z
i; j

Dt
m
0
s
w
B
k
z
i; j 1 B
k
z
i; j 1
Dr
2
2j 1
2j

B
k
z
i 1; j B
k
z
i 1; j
Dh
2

(15)
As mentioned above, for the explicit scheme of time derivative,
it is necessary to nd the maximum time increment such that the
solution remains stable during the complete analysis. It is found
that convergence of the solution is obtained if and only if the
following condition is satised:
Dtom
0
s
w
2
Dr
2

2
Dh
2

1
jDr
2

1
(16)
In agreement with the boundary conditions dened in Eq. (8)
and for any time level k, the boundary conditions are discretized
as follows:
B
k
r
0; j B
k
0r
0; j B
k
1r
0; j
B
k
z
0; j B
k
0z
0; j B
k
1z
0; j

at z d
g
u
2
t (17)
and
B
k
r
m; j 0
B
k
z
m; j 0

at z d
g
u
2
t h (18)
Additionally, boundary conditions have been added. At the
centre and at the maximum radius of the sheet, we have assumed
that the magnetic eld has negligible effects. The following
additional equations can then be written as
B
k
r
i; 0 0
B
k
z
i; 0 0

at r 0 (19)
and
B
k
r
i; n 0
B
k
z
i; n 0

at r
D
2
(20)
Moreover the initial conditions are approximated as
B
0
r
i; j 0
B
0
z
i; j 0

at t 0 (21)
ARTICLE IN PRESS
j r
i e
M

'
'
0
j r
M

e
r
r r
e
e
i + 1
i
i - 1
z
r
j - 1 j j+1
(S)
M
Fig. 2. Finite difference mesh.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1469
Knowing the magnetic eld (Eqs. (14) and (15)), the cir-
cumferential component of the induced current can be approxi-
mated by
J
k
i; j
1
m
0
B
k
r
i 1; j B
k
r
i 1; j
2Dh

B
k
z
i; j 1 B
k
z
i; j 1
2Dr

(22)
Afterwards the radial and the axial components of the Lorentz
force are expressed as follows:
f
k
r
i; j J
k
i; jB
k
z
i; j
f
k
z
i; j J
k
i; jB
k
r
i; j (23)
And nally the magnetic pressure acting on the sheet can be
estimated by the following equation:
P
k
r
i; j

n1
i0
F
k
r
i; j F
k
r
i 1; j
2
Dh

P
k
z
i; j

n1
i0
F
k
z
i; j F
k
z
i 1; j
2
Dh

(24)
From the above equations a nite difference code has been
written to solve Eq. (4) taking into account the boundary
conditions dened in Eq. (8). The numerical procedure used in
our code is given below. For each small time interval, the coil
current intensity is calculated (Eq. (1)) and then the coil eld is
obtained. Knowing the position of the sheet, the magnetic eld
density within the sheet is computed with Eqs. (14) and (15) so
that the boundary conditions are satised (Eqs. (1721)). After-
wards the eddy currents (Eq. (22)), the magnetic force densities
(Eq. (23)) and the magnetic pressures (Eq. (24)) are then
calculated.
2.3. Preliminary verications
In order to verify the validity of our nite difference code, a
preliminary calculation has been made when the sheet is at rest
over the at spiral coil. The experimental conditions used by
Takatsu et al. [4] are summarized in Table 1. They performed their
tests with a 5 turn at spiral coil connected to a capacitor bank of
40mF, with total inductance of 2.86mH and total circuit resistance
of 28.5mO. The initial charging voltage of the capacitor bank is
equal to 2kV. The initial gap d
g
between the sheet and the coil has
been taken equal to 2.9mm. In Fig. 3 solid lines are numerical
results, while the dots are the experimental results taken from
Ref. [4]. Fig. 3a presents the distribution of the magnetic eld (the
axial component B
z
and the radial component B
r
) in the absence of
the workpiece for the rst half cycle of the discharge current at
17.5ms where the current attains its maximum magnitude.
Afterwards the distribution of the magnetic eld with a xed
workpiece is plotted in Fig. 3b for the rst half cycle of the
discharge current at 17.5ms where the current attains its
maximum magnitude. In Fig. 2 the magnitude of the radial
component of the magnetic eld is much higher than the
magnitude of the axial component. As attempted, it can be
concluded that the axial component of the electromagnetic force
density f
z
contributes mainly in the deformation of the workpiece.
The numerical predictions obtained with our difference nite
code (for a sheet divided in 110 equally spaced intervals along the
radius and 20 equally spaced intervals through the thickness) are
in fairly good agreement with the available experimental results
[4]. The distribution of the axial magnetic force density f
z
has also
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Table 1
Material and geometrical properties of the electromagnetic system
Coil
Material Copper
No. of windings 5
Maximum radius of ring of coil 1mm
Maximum radius of spiral coil 40mm
Pitch 5.5mm
Electrical conductivity s
Cu
58MS/m
Work piece
Material Al 1050
Thickness h
0
3.0mm
Diameter 110 mm
Electrical conductivity s
Al
36.0MS/m
Fig. 3. Radial distribution of the magnetic eld B: (a) without a workpiece and (b) with an aluminium workpiece xed.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1470
been plotted in Fig. 4. A slight overestimation of the axial
magnetic force density f
z
is observed for a time value of 13.2ms.
However, we can conclude that the numerical predictions are in
agreement with the results of Takatsu et al. [4]. To understand the
penetration of the axial force density f
z
in the workpiece thickness
during the electromagnetic process, we have plotted in Fig. 5 the
spatial distribution (in the plane (r, z)) of the axial force density f
z
.
It is noticeable that the magnitude of the axial force gradually
increases as the current reaches its maximum and then it is
diffused through the thickness with decreasing magnitudes. The
force achieves its high magnitude near the bottom surface of the
disk, and then gradually diffuses. After the peak current, the force
density decreases near the bottom surface of the disk but still
remains constant inside the workpiece during few microseconds.
With the decrease of current, the force density decreases as the
time elapses.
As our nite difference code seems to predict accurately the
electromagnetic phenomena occurring during an EMF process,
nite element simulations integrating the nite difference
code used in this section can be conducted for an EMF test
(for instance for the free bulging electromagnetic sheet test
proposed in Ref. [4]).
3. Finite element simulations of the electromagnetic sheet free
bulging
The geometry considered for the simulations is the same as for
the free bulging electromagnetic sheet process proposed in Ref. [4].
The sheet is made of Al-1050 aluminium alloy. The sheet thickness
is equal to 0.5mm and the diameter is equal to 110mm. Takatsu
et al. [4] performed their tests with a 5 turn at spiral coil
connected to a capacitor bank of 40mF, with total inductance of
2.86mH and total circuit resistance of 28.5mO. The initial charging
voltage of the capacitor bank is now equal to 6kV. The initial gap d
g
between the sheet and the coil has been taken equal to 1.6mm.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Fig. 4. Magnetic force density f
z
distribution inside the aluminium workpiece at: (a) 6.8ms, (b) 13.2ms and (c) 19.6ms.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1471
The geometry and the mesh are presented in Fig. 6. The
blankholder has an internal diameter of 80mm. Due to the
symmetry of the process, the nite element simulations were
conducted with axi-symmetric assumption. This simplication is
used because of the symmetrical distribution of forces and
reduces the computing cost without affecting the results. The
sheet is considered as a deformable axi-symmetric planar part,
while the die and holder are modelled using analytical rigid
elements (R3D4 in ABAQUS Reference manuals [16]). The sheet
was meshed with CAX4R elements [16] which is a four-node
bilinear axi-symmetric quadrilateral element with reduced inte-
gration. Four elements through the thickness and 110 elements
along the radial length of the sheet are applied. A dynamic explicit
time integration scheme (ABAQUS/Explicit) is employed to ensure
the correct prediction of the inertial and dynamic effects of forces
acting on the sheet during the forming process. During the
simulation, the holder and the die are considered to be xed. The
simulation process time is xed to 270ms in agreement with
the experiments of Ref. [4]. In the simulations contact conditions
are needed to be considered between the die and the sheet as well
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Fig. 5. Diffusion of axial force density (GN) in the plane (r, z) as function of time: (a) at t 5ms, (b) at t 10ms, (c) at t 17.5ms, (d) at t 25ms, (e) at t 35ms and (f) at
t 50ms.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1472
as the sheet and holder. Coulomb friction law has been used with
a friction coefcient of 0.25. The geometrical parameters used for
FE simulations are summarized in Table 2.
The magnetic pressure, dened in Section 2, computed from
the nite difference code is implemented as a mechanical
pressure via a subroutine VDLOAD in the commercial FE code
ABAQUS/Explicit. The magnetic pressure acts on the lower surface
of the sheet in the upward direction for the free bulging of the
sheet. The action of the magnetic pressure is adapted at each time
increment to the current position of the sheet structure and its
currents node locations.
High-velocity deformation may or may not involve high strain
rates. It is well known that the fundamental constitutive
behaviour (stress, strain, strain-rate relations) for most metals
change qualitatively at high strain rates. Above these strain rates,
the apparent strain rate sensitivity of the material increases
markedly. To better understand the high-speed forming process
and to account for the rate-dependent dynamic phenomenon;
different material models were employed. For the purpose of
comparing the sheet behaviour during the EMF process, a quasi-
static hardening model of Hollomon-type power law was used
into ABAQUS/Explicit calculations. The classical Hollomons law is
expressed as
s s
0

n
(25)
where s is the effective stress, e
p
the effective plastic strain, s
0
and n are material constants. The values of the hardening
exponent n and of the material constant s
0
have been taken
equal to these used by Takatsu et al. [4]. Then rate-dependant
hardening power law was considered with different exponent and
multiplying factors to study the rate dependency effects during
the EMF process. The rate-dependant power law is dened by
s s
0

n
D_
p

m
(26)
where _
p
is the effective plastic strain rate, m and D are the rate-
dependant exponent and multiplying factors, respectively. In
addition, the elasto-plastic behaviour of the sheet is assumed to
be isotropic and is modelled by the J2 ow theory. The material
parameters are reported in Table 2. In order to study the strain rate
effect on the free bulging electromagnetic sheet process, different
cases have been considered. Firstly, we have taken the exponent m
equal to 0.075 and the material constant D equal to 1.7. With this
set of values, the rate-dependant hardening power law reproduces,
appreciatively, the behaviour of the hardening law used by Takatsu
et al. [4]. Afterwards, we have chosen the exponent m equal to
0.250 and the material constant D equal to 8.0 which corresponds
to material with a strong strain-rate dependency.
For all of the materials, the velocity of the sheet has been rst
analysed in order to ascertain the hypothesis accounted for the
calculation of the magnetic forces based on the work of Manea et al.
[13]. The maximumvelocity attained during the forming process is of
the order of 100120m/s, which is in agreement with the experi-
mental observations. The predicted velocity can be rendered as a high
velocity as compared to the velocity attained during a quasi-static
conventional forming process. But still found to be small enough to
full the assumption that the sheet velocity does not affect the
magnitude of the electromagnetic eld density during the forming
process (in agreement with Ref. [13] sheet velocity o10
7
m/s).
Fig. 7 presents the deformed mesh of the sheet at different
time values and for the rate-independent hardening law. The
deformed meshes computed with ABAQUS/Explicit reproduce
qualitatively the high-speed photographs of the deformed sheet
realized by Takatsu et al. [4]. Fig. 8 presents the vertical
displacement of the pole of the sheet (centre point of the sheet,
r 0mm) as a function of time. Fig. 9 presents the vertical
displacement of a point on the sheet at a distance of 20mm from
the pole. Both gures, Figs. 7 and 8, present the vertical
displacement of the sheet for the different material models. Solid
lines are numerical results while squares are experimental results
taken from Ref. [4]. At the beginning, the centre of the sheet metal
does not move while the rest of the sheet deected. In fact, the
magnetic pressure is equal to zero at the centre of the sheet and it
has the maximum value near the sheet region where the radius is
equal to 20mm. The centre of the sheet is mainly moved by the
inertial effects. As attempted and in agreement with Ref. [4], the
predictions obtained with Hollomon law overestimate the vertical
deection of the sheet at the end of the process. With the set of
values corresponding to the hardening model proposed in Ref. [4],
the sheet deection decreases but not signicantly. However, we
can conclude that the predicted results are globally in agreement
with the experimental results [4]. For the material with a strong
rate dependency, the vertical deection of the sheet pole
decreases appreciably. This result suggests that materials with a
weak rate dependency have a higher formability for the free-
bulging electromagnetic sheet process.
4. Conclusion
In the present work, two aspects of the electromagnetic
forming (EMF) process are investigated. The rst one enfolds the
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Fig. 6. Geometry of the free bulging electromagnetic sheet process.
Table 2
Material and geometrical properties of the free bulging test
Work piece
Material Al 1050
Thickness 0.5mm
Diameter 110mm
Electrical conductivity 34.45MS/m
Density 2.75 10
3
kg/m
3
Youngs Modulus 80.7GPa
Poissons ratio 0.33
Material constant s
0
118MPa
Hardening exponent n 0.27
Holder
Diameter (internal) 80mm
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1473
formulation and computation of electromagnetic parameters that
yields the electromagnetic pressure using a nite difference code.
The second aspect deals with a nite element simulation
implementing the results from the nite difference code in an
axi-symmetric model. In this work, we have developed a
numerical and analytical tool that can accurately calculate the
basic parameters such as electromagnetic eld density, electro-
magnetic force distribution and coil discharge current which are
necessary for the understanding of the EMF process. Propagation
of magnetic eld through the workpiece and the diffusion of the
magnetic forces into the sheet are also presented. The predicted
results are in good agreement with the experimental ones
available in the literature [4]. The nite difference code has then
been introduced in the commercial FE code ABAQUS/Explicit via
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Fig. 7. FE predictions of deformed sheet at different time values: (a) at t 19ms, (b) at t 95ms, (c) at t 135ms and (d) at t 240ms.
Fig. 8. Vertical deection of the sheet for a sheet radius equal to 0 mm. Fig. 9. Vertical deection of the sheet for a sheet radius equal to 20mm.
J.P.M. Correia et al. / International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 50 (2008) 14661475 1474
a user subroutine VDLOAD. FE simulations of the electromagnetic
free bulging test proposed by Takatsu et al. [4] have been
performed. The preliminary FE results demonstrate that the
hypotheses of the magneto stationary Maxwells equation are
veried (i.e. the sheet velocity is equal to 100120m/s). The FE
predictions are globally in agreement with the experimental
results [4]. Furthermore, effects of different material models were
investigated.
Acknowledgements
This work is carried out in the framework of the Ph.D.
scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture, High Education
and Research of Luxembourg (BFR/05/115-PRL1-LB). The authors
would like to thank C.R.P. Henri Tudor (Luxembourg) for their
support.
Appendix A
In agreement with Ref. [17], for an elementary circular
loop of the workpiece or of the coil, the potential vector A in
axi-symmetric condition has an azimuthal component expressed
by
A
y
r; z
m
0
2p
jr
0
; z
0
s
0

r
0
r

2 kKk
2
k
Ek

(A.1)
where K(k) and E(k) are the elliptic integrals of rst and second
kinds, respectively. The coordinates of the source point are
dened by (r
0
, z
0
). The coordinate of the target point where
the vector potential is needed to be calculated is dened by (r, z).
The current density in the source loop of section s
0
is designated
by j(r
0
,z
0
). The geometric factor k is given by
k
2

4r
0
r
r
0
r
2
z
2
(A.2)
The magnetic eld density B can be calculated using the
magnetic vector potential A as follows:
B curl A (A.3)
In axi-symmetric condition, using the expansion of Eq. (A.3) the
magnetic eld can be decomposed into a radial and an axial
components. In terms of the magnetic vector potential, these
components can be calculated using
B
r

qA
y
qz
and B
z

A
y
r

qA
y
qr
(A.4)
By inserting the expression of magnetic potential A
y
, Eq. (A.1)
into Eq. (A.4), the following expressions for the radial and axial
components of the magnetic eld density are obtained:
B
r

m
0
2p
jr
0
; z
0
s
0
z
r
1
r
0
r
2
z
2

1=2
Ek
r
2
0
r
2
z
2
r
0
r
2
z
2
Kk

B
z

m
0
2p
jr
0
; z
0
s
0
1
r
0
r
2
z
2

1=2
Ek
r
2
0
r
2
z
2
r
0
r
2
z
2
Kk

(A.5)
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ARTICLE IN PRESS
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