Modeling and simulating of steel sheets cutting

After machining, sheet metal working is the most widely used manufacturing process in the mechanical engineering industry. Unlike stamping and bending, for example, whose aim is to plastically deform the sheet metal, sheet metal cutting is a special operation that stresses the material until it finally breaks. During the operation, the material is subjected to complex stresses, often of a non-linear nature, and before final fracture, the material is subject to damage and crack propagation. This makes it all the more difficult to correctly predict the evolution over time of cutting phenomena, all the more so as various mechanical and metallurgical parameters contribute to the modification of sheet metal behavior, such as :

• work-hardening and damage, which characterize the material's strength and degradation under load until final failure;

• the metallurgical morphology (grain shapes and sizes), crystallographic texture and material structures that evolve during the process.

All these factors influence the quality of the manufactured part. For example, the state of hardening and damage of the cut edge will later have a major influence on the fatigue life of parts in service.