A REVIEW OF THE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES APPLIED TO THE DEEP DRAWING PROCESS Abdalla S. Wifi Department of Mechanical Design and Production Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University Egypt aswifi@yahoo.com Tamer F. Abdelmaguid Ahmed I. El-Ghandour Department of Mechanical Design and Production Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University Egypt tabdelmaguid@eng.cu.edu.eg ABSTRACT Deep Drawing is an important sheet metal forming process that appears in many industries. Like other sheet metal forming processes, deep drawing is characterized by very complicated deformation affected by the process parameters which include die and punch shapes, blank shape, the blank holding force, material properties and lubrication. Due to the complex functions that describe the process output as related to these parameters, the optimization in the deep drawing process is a challenging task. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the research community to apply optimization techniques to this process. In this paper we present a comprehensive review on the optimization techniques used and identify directions for future research. KEYWORDS Deep Drawing, Optimization, finite element, sheet metal forming 1. INTRODUCTION Deep drawing is one of the most essential processes in sheet metal forming. It is widely used in many industrial fields such as automotive and packing industries. According to the DIN standard, DIN 8584, Deep drawing is defined as “a tensile- compressive sheet forming process in which a plane blank is formed into a hollow part open on one side (direct drawing) or an open hollow part is formed into another hollow part with a smaller cross-section (re-drawing).” The optimization of the deep drawing process is necessary to improve important industrial performance measures such as productivity and cost of goods manufactured. The improvement of such measures can be largely achieved by increasing formability, reducing tool wear and reducing scrap percentage. In order to achieve that, some process parameters need to be controlled such as blank shape, sheet dimensions, blank holding force, lubrication and punch/die design. However, since the beginning of the deep drawing process and up till now, some parameters are usually determined based on experts’ judgment (Huh and Kim, 2001). Recently, there has been a growing interest in the research community to apply different optimization techniques to the deep drawing process. Optimization techniques provide a systematic method for determining the process parameters to achieve a specific objective. Due to the complex nature of the deep drawing process, closed form equations that are based on theoretical analysis of this process are either difficult to deal with using standard mathematical programming techniques, or may turn to be unsuitable for realistic applications. Therefore, most of the research work concerned with the optimization of the deep drawing process uses either experimentation or finite element simulation to verify the implemented optimization approach. Based on the process parameters considered in the optimization of the deep drawing process, five main lines of research are identified. The first line of research addresses the optimization of the blank holder force to avoid wrinkling and fracture. The second line focuses on the design parameters of the Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, October 20-23, 2007, Alexandria, Egypt, edited by M. H. Elwany, A. B. Eltawil 1111