An Investigation on Formability of Ti6Al4V Alloy in the Three-Layer Sheet Hot Stamping Process

In the hot stamping process, the sheet will lose a lot of heat which results in poor formability of the sheet. So, a novel hot stamping process for the three-layer sheet is proposed in this paper, which uses two steel sheets to clamp the titanium alloy sheet for transferring and stamping. In this paper, the hot stamping depth is studied by experiments and simulation under the single/three-layer sheet hot stamping condition. The results show that the temperature of the titanium alloy sheet can be controlled effectively by using the three-layer sheet hot stamping process, and the stamping depth can be improved. Compared with the single-layer sheet hot stamping process, the depth of the titanium alloy parts can be increased by 135.7% under the three-layer sheet hot stamping process at 900 °C, and the thickness distribution of titanium alloy parts obtained by three-layer sheet hot stamping process is more uniform. The finite element analysis results show that the temperature and stress distribution of titanium alloy sheet by three-layer sheet stamping process is more uniform, and the temperature difference is small through the sheet. The distribution of thickness obtained by simulation has good consistency with the experimental results. Under the three-layer sheet hot stamping process, the titanium alloy sheet has good deep drawing.