Superplastic forming of Friction Stir processed magnesium alloys for aeronautical applications: a Modeling approach

Magnesium alloys are attractive for lightweight structural applications in the transportation industry because of their low density and high specific strength and stiffness [1]. With an ultrafine-grained microstructure, they exhibit superplasticity at relatively low temperatures and high strain rates [2]. Friction stir processing (FSP) was used to obtain a microstructure with ultrafine grains in the magnesium alloy AZ31. In this project, microstructures obtained using different rotational speeds are studied. Free bulge forming of the FSP processed AZ31 sheets are carried out to evaluate the superplastic behaviour [3]. The model and the evolution equations have been implemented into a commercial finite element modeling (FEM) code and different simulations are conducted to correlate the experimental and numerical results for the model validation [4]. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the microstructure on the superplastic forming behaviour using free bulge forming and FE simulations.