Four Aspects of Sheet Metal Formability and Their Assessment

An attempt is made to define formability quantitatively. Owing to the complexity of the concept of formability, it is analysed and four aspects of formability are distinguished. They are: the formability of the material at a critical section, the formability of the material in general, process efficiency, and proportional increase in surface area. Distinction is thus made between formability (or ductility) of the material and the extent to which the ductility is exploited in particular processes. A method of quantitative assessment is proposed for each of the four aspects of formability and demonstrated with experimental results.