Studies on crack propogation in plasma arc welded Ti-6Al-4V joint during erichsen cupping test

Abstract

Formability is one of the important parameter which describes the quality of the sheet metal. It is the ability of sheet metal to undergo plastic deformation without being damaged. There are two types of formability tests. One is a simple test which includes tensile, bulge and hardness test, another is simulative test like Erichsen cupping test, limit done height test, swift cup test. In this paper, numerical and experiemntatal investigations of formability of Ti-6Al-4V sheet are presented. Plasm arc welding experiment is conducted on thin Ti-6Al-4V sheet and Erichsen cupping test is uysed as the test method to determine the Erichsen cupping parameters. Tests have been conducted on plasma arc welded thin Ti-6Al-4V joint sheet as well as on the parent metal. Erichsen cupping index (IE) and acture load are determined during experimentation. Finite element analysis is done using commerical ABAQUS code. The simulation results are compared with experimental results. Based on the results, it is observed that the formability of welded Ti-6Al-4V is more than the base metal and the predicted Erichsen cupping index (IE), fracture load are good in agreeembnt with the experimental results. BEIESP.