Experimental and numerical study of electromagnetic forming of AZ31B magnesium alloy sheet

Wrought magnesium alloys are interesting materials for automotive and aeronautical industries due to their low density in comparison to steel and aluminium alloys, making them ideal candidates when designing a lower weight vehicle. However, due to their hexagonal closepacked (hep) crystal structure, magnesium alloys exhibit low formability at room temperature. For that reason, in this study a high velocity forming process, electromagnetic forming (EMF), was used to study the formability of AZ31B magnesium alloy sheet at high strain rates. In the first stage of this work, specimens of AZ31B magnesium alloy sheet have been characterised by uniaxial tensile tests at quasi-static and dynamic strain rates at room temperature. The influence of the strain rate is outlined and the parameters of Johnson-Cook constitutive material model were fit to experimental results. In the second stage, sheets of AZ31B magnesium alloy have been biaxially deformed by electromagnetic forming process using different coil and die configurations. Deformation values measured from electromagnetically formed parts are compared to the ones achieved by conventional forming technologies. Finally, numerical study using an alternative method for computing the electromagnetic fields in the EMF process simulation, a combination of Finite Element Method (FEM) for conductor parts and Boundary Element Method (BEM) for insulators, is shown.