Date Available

12-7-2011

Year of Publication

2004

Document Type

Thesis

College

Engineering

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Marwan Khraisheh

Abstract

Superplastic forming (SPF) is a valuable near net shape fabrication method, used to produce very complex, contoured and monolithic structures that are often lighter, stronger and safer than the assemblies they replace. However, the widespread industrial use of Superplastic (SP) alloys is hindered by a number of issues including low production rate and limited predictive capabilities of stability during deformation and failure. Failure during SPD may result from geometrical macroscopic instabilities and/or microstructural aspects. However, the available failure criteria are either based on geometrical instabilities or microstructural features and do not account for both failure modes. The present study presents a generalized multi-scale stability criterion for SP materials, accounting for both aspects of failure under various loading conditions. A combined model accounting for cavity nucleation and plasticity controlled cavity growth along with a grain growth model and a modified microstructure based constitutive equation for SP materials is incorporated into Harts stability analysis to develop the proposed stability criterion for different loading conditions. Effects of initial grain size, initial levels of cavitation, nucleation strain, strain-rate sensitivity, and grain-growth exponent on the optimum forming curves of different SP alloys are investigated, for different loading conditions.

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