Experimental analysis of die wear in sheet metal forming

Advanced high strength steels (AHSS) are particularly attractive to automotive industry. Stamping AHSS parts, however, results in accelerated die wear problems which could emerge after few thousands of stampings. The existing wear testing methods are either not suitable for charactering die wear in stamping or requires significant capital investment. The first generation of strip-on-cylinder wear test apparatus which can efficiently and economically characterize die wear is introduced in this paper. Different measurement methods were compared and white light interferometer with nanoscale accuracy was chosen to determine the wear volume due to its overall advantages. Based on the strip-on-cylinder wear test apparatus, a design of experiments study analyzing the effects of contact pressure, sliding speed and hardness of the die material on die wear was conducted and the results were discussed.