Cold drawing of strain hardening carbon steel

Metal deformation analyses generally ignore strain hardening assuming a rigid, perfectly plastic metal or make use of a mean yield stress to model strain hardening in a simplified manner. This paper demonstrates that solutions of the plastic deformation analysis obtained by incorporating a linear strain hardening behaviour in the governing force balance differential equations prior to the integration provides a good method to estimate the working loads needed to draw a carbon steel through a conical dies. Comparison with data collected during an industrial cold drawing process of a high-carbon steel shows that predictions based on the proposed model are in good agreement with the experimental results and are, in general, conservative.