Cylindrical cup deep drawing of ZEK100 sheet at elevated temperatures

Cylindrical cup deep drawing experiments are performed on as-received magnesium rare-earth alloyed ZEK100 rolled sheet between room temperature and 250 °C. All tests are performed using warm tooling comprising a 101.6 mm (4") diameter cylindrical punch and smooth die and blank holder. Both isothermal and non-isothermal experiments are performed with a draw ratio of 2.25. Warm temperature formability of ZEK100 is investigated through determination of draw depths of cylindrical cups under isothermal and non-isothermal conditions. The effect of sheet anisotropy during deep drawing operation is investigated by measuring the earring profiles by means of digital imaging as well as sheet thickness from the center to the outer diameter in the rolling direction. It is found that ZEK100 sheets exhibit significantly better warm temperature drawing performance over commercial wrought magnesium alloy sheet – e.g. a full draw of 203.2 mm (8") blanks of ZEKIOO-O was achieved with tool temperature of 150 °C compared to a full draw for AZ31B-O with a tool temperature of 225 °C. Temperature process windows are used to present a direct comparison of forming behavior between ZEK100 and AZ31B. The increased forming performance of ZEK100 at elevated temperatures is attributed to the weakened texture resulting from alloying with Zr and Nd, respectively, allowing for elevated slip activity at lower temperatures.