Evaluation of Forming Limit Diagram of aluminum alloy 6061-T6 at ambient temperature

As fuel price increases, automobile industries are looking for more fuel efficient cars with less carbon emissions and high crashworthiness. Accordingly, this has necessitated for further research into the formability of Al 6xxx series alloys that have low weight and high strength properties. Since Al 6xxx series alloys are used in automotive panels, their formability characterization is essential. Hence, it is important to study the Forming Limit Diagram (FLD) which predicts the limit strains which in turn, can be imposed safely during forming. The present work manly focuses on determining the Forming Limit Diagrams of A16061-T6 alloy experimentally. The measurement of limit strains was accomplished using Digital Image Correlation Technique. The Hill - Swift model was used to predict FLD theoretically and a good agreement was found with the experimental results. Experimental results show that the use of appropriate formability parameters and reasonable processing methods can improve formability of A16061-T6 alloys.