Stretching and Forming Limit Curve of Steel–Glass Fibre Reinforced and Non-Reinforced Polyamide–Steel Sandwich Materials

Abstract

This paper focuses on investigating the forming behaviour of sandwich materials composed of steel sheets and glass fibre-reinforced polyamide 6 (GF-PA6), i.e., thermoplastic-based fibre metal laminates (FML). Stretching and forming limit curve (FLC) determination of FML with different cover/core layer thickness ratios at various forming temperatures, i.e., at room temperature (RT), 200 and 235 °C, are the main approaches for characterizing their formability. In addition, the formability of mono-materials and non-reinforced sandwich materials is investigated as a reference. For a successful test and reliable results, several technical issues are considered, such as the suitable lubrication configuration and digital image correlation at elevated forming temperatures. The results revealed that the formability of non-reinforced sandwich materials with different core layer thicknesses exhibited compared formability to their monolithic steel sheet and no remarkable improvement in their formability with increasing the temperature up to 200 °C. Conversely, the formability of FML shows significant improvement (approx. 300%) with increasing temperature with a forming depth of about 33 mm at 235 °C compared to only 12 mm at RT.