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2D Finite Element Analysis of Rubber Pad Forming Process

Conference Paper · October 2016

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Selcuk University Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi
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 2 ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE, ECOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY-2016 (ICONSETE’2016)

2D Finite Element Analysis of Rubber Pad Forming Process

H. Selçuk Halkacı*1, Ekrem Öztürk2, Mevlüt Türköz3 and Murat Dilmeç4
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Selçuk University, Konya, TURKEY.
(E-mail: shalkaci@selcuk.edu.tr)
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seydişehir A. Cengiz
Faculty of Engineering, N. Erbakan University, Konya, TURKEY.
(E-mail: eozturk@konya.edu.tr)
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Selçuk University, Konya, TURKEY.
(E-mail: mevlutturkoz@selcuk.edu.tr)
4
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
N. Erbakan University, Konya, TURKEY.
(E-mail: muratdilmec@konya.edu.tr)

Corresponding Author’s e-mail: shalkaci@selcuk.edu.tr

ABSTRACT

Rubber pad stamping process is mostly used in aerospace and automotive applications and is
convenient for small-scale production of sheet metal parts. Simulation of this process requires
a lot of processing time since rubber parts cannot be modelled utilizing shell elements. This
deficiency was eliminated by considering 2D axisymmetric approach in LS-DYNA explicit
finite element software. Inconel 625 and DX56D galvanized sheet metal blanks were used
with the support of four rubber pads. There are many simulation parameters for successful
modelling of the process. In this study, all the parameters needed for an accurate finite
element analysis of this process are determined. Consequently, the blanks were successfully
formed in simulations with a gain of approximately 50% in CPU time as compared to 3D
analyses.

Keywords: 2D axisymmetric, finite element analysis, hydroforming, LS-DYNA, rubber pad,

sheet metal.

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1. INTRODUCTION

In today’s competitive environment, researchers and manufacturers tend to reduce production

time and costs for survival. To achieve this, many different processes are developed for
fabrication of typical parts. Within these processes, sheet metal hydroforming process is the
costly one, which is widely used in industry. This process requires two female dies
(conventionally named blank holder and die) with a male die (punch) that has a role for
deforming the blank to the desired shape. As a matter of fact, the need for multiple tools
increases the tooling costs. Rubber pad forming process is also the one used generally in
automotive and aviation for producing shallow parts without using a female die [1].
Particularly in aeronautics, detailed products are needed to be formed. So, this flexible
forming process is the right choice in these fields in terms of production costs [2].

There are many processes such as Guerin, Verson-Wheelon, Verson Hydroform, Marform,
Maslennikov, and Demarest using rubber pad forming techniques. In this study the Verson
hydroforming process is adopted. Figure 1 illustrates the utilized process, which has an edged
and detailed punch for drawing a sheet. Normally, this type of drawing process requires two
drawing operations in conventional tooling. Thus, by using Verson hydroforming technique
approximately two thirds of tooling costs can be saved compared to those of conventional
forming technique [3].

In literature, several studies have been conducted to perform the finite element analysis (FEA)
of rubber pad forming processes for different purposes. Yamashita et al. [4] used DYNA3D
dynamic explicit finite element (FE) code in order to simulate a circular cup drawing process
and investigate the effect of various forming conditions on the blank deformation. Sala [5]
investigated the Guerin rubber-forming process of aluminium alloy fuselage frame pertaining
to AerMacchi MB-339 trainer aircraft and optimised this process by taking into account
various conditions. Liu and Hua [6] used rubber pad forming process to manufacture metallic
bipolar plate of SS304 stainless steel for a proton exchange membrane. They analysed the
process control parameters such as rubber hardness, internal and outer radii, and draft angle
by Abaqus software. Dirikolu and Akdemir [7] utilized ANSYS finite element package for 3D
simulation of flexible forming process and studied the effects of several parameters on this
process. Ramezani et al. [8] investigated the process and deformation mechanisms during
rubber pad forming by means of commercial software ABAQUS/Standart. They analysed the
effect of rubber type and punch velocity on the process and validated the FEA results with the
experimental results.

This study is intended for 2D FEA of rubber pad forming process with commercial software
LS-DYNA explicit finite element code. Hence, all the necessary input parameters were
determined and explained to carry out a precise simulation in this software package.

Figure 1. Verson hydroforming process [3].

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2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

The FEA of the used rubber pad forming process is numerically time-consuming since four
large rubber parts are used. In this study, firstly a 3D model of the process was created and
run. But it was seen that the calculated CPU time in 3D model was 40 hours. After that, by
taking the advantage of axisymmetric nature of the process, 2D axisymmetric approach was
used for the FE model.

2.1. Finite Element Modelling

In the study, numerical calculations were performed by commercial LS-DYNA explicit finite
element code. Figure 2 shows the used rubber pad forming process encompassing eight parts
called punch, blank holder, Inconel 625 and DX56D blanks, rubber 90A, 90B, 70, and 60.
The numbers indicate the hardness of the rubbers in Shore units. The reason of using four
rubber parts with different thickness and hardness is that the rubbers cannot undergo high
hydraulic pressure. As can be seen in figure two sheet metal blanks were used. The Inconel
625 nickel-based alloy in thickness of 0.635 mm was placed on the punch and also blank
holder, and the DX56D galvanized steel in thickness of 2 mm was placed under the rubber
90A. The process starts with the move of the punch upwards and ends up when the punch
stops and the blanks were formed to the desired shapes. The hydraulic pressure acting onto
the rubbers prevents high local strains by increasing the contact area between the punch and
blanks.

Figure 2. Dimensions of the tools used in FEA.

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All the parts were first modelled in Solidworks and then meshed with Hypermesh Software.
After all, the meshed parts were imported into Ls-Prepost and appropriate keywords were
assigned. The meshed tools can be seen in Figure 3. For the rubber parts, which take large
strains, tetrahedral mesh type was used as recommended by [9]. Besides, hexahedral mesh
type caused negative volume error in FEA. However, hexahedral mesh type was utilized for
the punch, blank holder, and both the sheet metal blanks since it yielded reasonable results.
The whole model consists of 129688 elements in total. Because of the 2D axisymmetric
approach, element formulation (ELFORM) 15 was used for all the parts. ELFORM 15 is a
volume weighted axisymmetric solid element formulation and works best with structural
applications [10]. In 2D axisymmetric modelling, there are significant rules to be taken into
account. These are:

(a) Nodes must lie in the global x-y plane, i.e., the z-coordinate must be zero,
(b) All nodes must have x-coordinates greater than or equal to 0,
(c) Y-axis should be taken as axis of symmetry,
(d) Axisymmetric element formulations should be used.

For the accurate FE modelling of the rubber pad forming process, the rules above were
carefully considered. Since large strain occurs in rubber parts, it is likely that contact
instabilities and distortion will take place in the simulation. To prevent this, hourglass mode
was used as IHQ viscosity type 5, the stiffness form of Flanagan-Belytschko with exact
volume integration. Also four integration points were used for both the blank materials, and
one integration point for the other parts. Explicit time integration scheme was used with no
mass scaling and the simulation time was taken 0.014 seconds.

Oscillations can be seen during the first contact between the rubber and blank, and also other
parts. One can get rid of those by using numerical mass damping in the system. Higher values
may lead instabilities and should be avoided [13]. After performing a few simulations by
increasing system damping constant (VALDMP), and consequently observing a non-
oscillating system, VALDMP was set to 104 in DAMPING_GLOBAL card.

Figure 3. Mesh types of the parts used in FEA.

2.1.1. Boundary Conditions

Time-displacement-based punch motion was defined with +y translational degree-of-freedom

by means of the keyword BOUNDARY-PRESCRIBED_MOTION_RIGID. The punch
displacement curve was given in Figure 4a. The blank holder was defined as rigid body with
no degree-of-freedom. The keyword LOAD_SEGMENT was used to define the hydraulic
pressure as in Figure 4b. Due to the 2D elements, definition of the pressure in -y direction was

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provided by selecting the upper edge line of the elements. The nodes of the left edge were
also selected and constrained in x direction, and also in y and z rotation because of the
axisymmetric condition. The nodes outside of where hydraulic pressure was applied, was
selected down to the blank holder surface (the right side of the model) and constrained in all
directions and rotations.

Figure 4. a punch displacement and b hydraulic pressure curves.

2.1.2. Contact definitions

Contact definition is a crucial procedure for the stability and accuracy of the FEA. LS-DYNA
offers a number of contact types for 2D simulation analysis and so in this study,
2D_AUTOMATIC_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE contact type was utilized for the tools. For
the selected contact type, friction coefficients between the parts were defined by taking the
values used in literature [8, 11, 12]. Widely used Coloumb friction model was adopted using
penalty contact algorithm with PENOPT=4 (slave side nodes with area or mass weighted
option) existing in CONTROL_CONTACT card. Table 1 demonstrates the eight friction
coefficients chosed between the tools.

Table 1. Friction coefficients defined between the parts.

Parts Friction coefficient

Rubber 90A – Rubber 90B 0.3

Rubber 90B – Rubber 70 0.3
Rubber 70 – Rubber 60 0.3
Rubber 90A – Blank holder 0.25
Rubber 90A – DX56D 0.3
Inconel 625 – DX56D 0.6
Inconel 625 – Blank holder 0.03
Inconel 625 – Punch 0.8

2.1.3. Material Models

The Inconel 625 and DX56D blank materials used in this study have both elastic and inelastic
behaviours. Elastic-plastic material model PIECEWISE_LINEAR_PLASTICITY (MAT24)
was used by assuming isotropic behaviour for both the blank materials. Stress-strain curves,
which are obtained from uniaxial tensile tests, were given in Figure 5. Also the mechanical
properties of the blank materials were represented in Table 2.

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Figure 5. Stress-strain curves for Inconel 625 and DX56D.

The blank holder and punch were modelled as rigid bodies using MAT20 RIGID material
model. Mechanical properties of the stainless steel were used for these tools.

Table 2. Mechanical properties of Inconel 625 and DX56D.

Young Modulus Yield Strength Density Poisson’s

(Mpa) (Mpa) (kg/m3) Ratio

Inconel 625 2.1x105 516 7.8x10-9 0.28

DX56D 2.1x105 146 7.8x10-9 0.3

The adopted rubber pads are the polyurethanes in different hardnesses, which exhibit non-
linear elastic stress-strain behaviours. In this research, MOONEY-RIVLIN (MAT27) hyper-
elastic material model was used for the rubbers. This material model is characterized by strain
energy density function and defined as:

W A( I  3)  B( II  3)  C( III 2  1)  D( III  1)2

where

C 0.5 A  B

A(5v  2)  B(11v  5)
D
2(1  2v )

v = Poisson’s ratio
2(A+B) = shear modulus of linear elasticity
I, II, III = invariants of right Cauchy-Green Tensor C.

MOONEY-RIVLIN material model (MAT27) requires two types of inputs to characterize the
elastomer’s material behavior. For the first type, one must give the gauge length, width and
thickness with a curve giving the force - actual change dL in the gauge length; for the latter,

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one must give only the constants A and B that are defined for rubbers in different hardness
values. Since an uniaxial tensile test could not be done for the rubber parts in this study, the
constants A and B, which were taken from literature [11, 12], were used as inputs. Table 3
shows these adopted constants with densities and Poisson’s ratios.

Table 2. Mechanical properties of the rubber pads.

Density Poisson’s
A B
(kg/m3) Ratio

Shore 60 0.474 0.118 1.1x10-9 0.499

Shore 70 0.736 0.184 1.1x10-9 0.499
Shore 90 2.824 0.706 1.1x10-9 0.499

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

After all the essential inputs were set in the FE model and the simulation was run, time step
size was calculated as 1.55x10-8 by LS-DYNA. The simulation time of 0.014 seconds was
needed to be proven so that no inertial effects were occurred and quasi-static behavior was
maintained in the FEA. In order to perform a quasi-static analysis by artificially increasing the
forming speed, the kinetic energy should be a small fraction (less than 1%) of the internal
energy over the majority of the FEA. In order to verify this condition, kinetic/internal energy
ratio was compared in Figure 6. As seen in the figure, the kinetic energy increases due to the
plastic work and the internal energy is a very small fraction of the kinetic energy through the
forming process. The maximum value of the internal energy is 3.2 N.m. So it can be clearly
said that the FEA of the rubber pad forming process reflects a quasi-static behavior.

Figure 6. Kinetic/internal energy curves.

As can be seen in Figure 4, at the beginning of the process (until 0.001 seconds) the blanks
were pre-bulged with a pressure of 42 Mpa. Figure 7 shows the deformation occurred after
pre-bulging and at the final punch stroke.

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Figure 7. Deformation occurred in the analysis a after pre-bulging b at final punch stroke.

Thickness distribution of both the DX56D and Inconel 625 sheet metal blanks were given in
Figure 8a. The initial thickness of 2mm of the blank DX56D reduces to 1.478 mm at distance
69.3 mm, which corresponds to the end of punch nose radius. There is a slight increase in
thickness in the blank Inconel 625 at the same location and the thinning shifts downwards, to
the beginning of the second radius. To get a better understanding of the thickness comparison,
thickness reduction percentages were shown in Figure 8b. From the figure, it can be seen that
maximum thinning occurs at different locations. Maximum thickness reductions are
approximately 26% and 20% in DX56D and Inconel 625, respectively. It can be definitely
stated that the maximum thickness reductions have a direct proportion to the material’s
strengths.

Figure 8. Comparison of a thicknesses of the blanks b thickness reduction of the blanks, and c schematic of the
horizontal distance

The comparison of three simulations that were performed with and without rubber pads, and
also with 3D analysis including rubber pads was given in Figure 9. As can be seen in the

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figure, FEA without rubber is clock-friendly compared to the others. However, the effect of
using rubber pads should be investigated further to be able to assert that the FEA without
rubber is the optimal one.

Figure 9. Element number and CPU clock time comparison of three cases

4. CONCLUSION

In this paper, numerical simulation of the rubber pad forming process was done in LS-DYNA
software package using a 2D axisymmetric approach. Several simulation parameters were
specified in order to manage a successful forming 2D analysis. To this end, rubber pad
forming processes in industry could be conducted more efficiently with a less CPU clock
time-consuming 2D FEA.
As future works, several process parameters such as friction coefficient and model, rubber pad
hardness, and also FEA without rubber pads will be investigated. Validation of the 2D FEA
will be done by carrying out some experiments.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported by the BAP office of Selcuk University with the project number
16701702. BAP support is profoundly acknowledged.

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[3] M. Ramezani and Z.M. Ripin, Rubber-pad forming processes: Technology and
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[4] M. Yamashita, T. Hattori, N. Nishimura, 2007. Numerical simulation of sheet metal

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