Investigation on deformation of DP600 steel sheets in electric-pulse triggered energetic materials forming

Electric-pulse triggered energetic materials forming (ETEF) is a high-speed manufacturing process, which utilizes the chemical energy released by energetic materials (EMs) triggered by underwater wire discharge to plastically shape metals. ETEF is not fully understood, particularly in research on the discharge characteristics of energetic materials triggered by metal wires and the deformation process of metal sheets. The above two problems were investigated in this paper using experimentation and numerical simulation. For the pulse discharge characteristics, the peak values of voltage and current were reduced during the triggering process of energetic materials, and the triggering energy consumption of energetic materials was quantified to be about 200 J. The matching parameters of different capacitor-voltage devices may be insensitive to triggering the energy release of energetic materials. The maximum major strain and thinning rate of the bulged specimen under ETEF conditions were significantly reduced when compared to the quasi-static specimen with the same bulging height, and the specimen’s deformation uniformity and strain distribution were improved. The simulation results showed that the addition of energetic materials significantly improved the plastic strain energy of the blank. The deformation of the blank in ETEF can be divided into two stages: the initial chemical energy action stage and the inertia action stage. The bulging height of sheet metal increased by nearly 301% in inertia action stage, accounting for 80% of the total deformation time, and the effective plastic strain distribution was more uniform.