FINITE ELEMENT AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSES OF REPETITIVE BENDING AND STRAIGHTENING OF COMMERCIALLY PURE COPPER

Abstract

Feasibility of a repetitive bending and straightening (RBS) process to introduce fine-grained microstructures in sheets of commercially pure copper was investigated. The deformation behavior during RBS was analyzed using the finite element method to compare with the experimental results. The tensile strength increased after the first two passes but decreased for the third pass, probably due to the damage accumulated during the first two passes in the sample. The elongation to failure was also higher after the second pass than the third pass. The hardness increased significantly; however, the increase was not uniform throughout the length of the sample suggesting that the deformation is not homogeneous.