Experimental study on the formability of AA6016 sheets pre-strained by rolling

The effects of prestrain by rolling on the formability of AA6016 sheets in the biaxial stretching region are studied in this paper. An experimental program including formability experiments has been carried out for as-received and prestrained sheets. Forming limit strains are determined by the digital image correlation technique and then mapped into stress space using an anisotropic plasticity model in order to assess the path-independence of forming limit stresses. Different diagrams for description of formability such as the traditional strain-based forming limit diagram (FLD), the forming limit stress diagram (FLSD) and various equivalent plastic strain based (EPS-based) diagrams are applied in order to study the effect of prestrain. It is shown that prestrain by rolling has the same effect on the forming limit strains as prestrain by plane strain tension. Furthermore, the forming limits of the virgin material nearly coincide with the forming limits of the prestrained material in the FLSD and EPS-based diagrams, serving as a conservative estimate for the prestrained material. Due to the roping phenomenon, the material displays significant anisotropy in forming limit strains. At the same time, the presence of roping does not affect the path-independence of the forming limits in the FLSD and EPS-based diagrams.