Project Application Details

Dr, Muhammad, Amir, muhammad.amir@strath.ac.uk, 07968633642, Lecturer

The proposed research covers four different aspects from academic and industrial perspectives; these include understanding of underlying physical micromechanisms, development of a continuum based constitutive model using applied mechanics and mathematics principles, numerical implementation of these principles and finally simulation of the sheet metal forming process. Therefore, considering EPSRC research themes, the proposed research simultaneously falls into three broad prioritized research themes of EPSRC. These include Physical sciences, Mathematical sciences, and Engineering. The proposed work will help in optimizing sheet metal forming and is therefore aligned with the EPSRC theme – Manufacturing the Future.

The proposed research project is fundamental research with industrial application to sheet metal forming processes. As discussed above, the proposed work will be the first of its kind and will contribute to the improvement of sheet metal forming processes in the industries involved in producing parts through this process. The investigator has had detailed discussions about the manufacturing industry problems involved in sheet metal forming and it is believed that the framework developed during this work will be an invaluable predictive tool for the industry. All of these discussions took place through the Advanced Forming Research Center (AFRC) with the concerned industrial partners, including Rolls Royce, Barnes Aerospace, Timet and Boeing. Therefore, it is believed that the outcome of the proposed work will improve UK’s manufacturing process prediction capabilities and will also contribute towards the competitiveness of UK manufacturing industry
To apply and exploit the proposed idea different mechanisms are already in place. These are all linked with AFRC’s partnership with different catapult centres and collaborative programmes, such as Strategic Affordable Manufacturing in the UK through Leading Environmental Technologies (SAMULET), High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centre, and a newly formed Simulation Forum comprising of different catapult centres (AFRC, AMRC, CPI, MTC, NAMRC, NCC, WMG) all over the UK. Proposer has been heavily involved as a technical resource in above mentioned mechanisms on various projects and proposed work (micromechanics based modelling) is one of the areas where above centres and forums lack. Therefore, proposed work will not only result into the in-depth understanding of microstructure evolution during sheet metal forming but will also provide a handy predictive tool to model different types of forming processes at sub-micron scale.

The fundamental aspects of the research and academic beneficiaries are discussed below.

Better understanding of underlying micro-mechanisms active during different deformation modes in metals and alloys – these results will be useful for materials scientists and the mechanics of materials research community.

A robust thermodynamically consistent theory to take into account the effect of underlying micro-mechanisms using applied mathematics and mechanics based principles – these results will be useful for applied mathematics and mechanics research community.

Development and implemention of a robust algorithm and interface with commercial finite element code to simulate different deformation processes, specifically sheet metal forming – this will be of benefit to the computational mechanics research community.

From an academic perspective, the fundament aspect of the proposed research will be useful for researchers and groups involved in projects about mechanics of materials, for example, Loughborough University (Mechanics of Advanced Materials Research Group), Oxford University (Solid Mechanics & Materials Engineering Group), Cambridge University (Mechanics, Materials, and Design), Imperial College (Mechanics of materials), etc.

The results of the research will be disseminated to both the academic and industrial communities. The fundamental academic and specialized industrial research results and knowledge arising from this project will be disseminated using the following routes:
• International refereed journals of high impact (e.g. International Journal of Plasticity, Mechanics of Materials, Computational Materials Science, Materials Letters, etc)
• Prestigious international and UK conferences (e.g. US National Congress on Computational Mechanics, International Workshop on Computational Mechanics of Materials, International Conference on Computational Plasticity, European Conference on Computational Mechanics of Materials and Structures, etc)
• A website will be made, discussing the methodology and findings of the research for interested researchers and industries.