Cold Blow Forming of a Thin Sheet in AA8006 Aluminum Alloy

Thin sheets of aluminum alloys are widely used for the packaging of pharmaceutical and cosmetic products and in the food industry; however, they present critical issues during the forming process. The blow forming process, which is widely used in the glass and plastics industries and for the hot forming of metal sheets, allows solving the problems related to the lubrication and the small tolerance ranges of the tools required by the well-known deep drawing process to form a thin sheet. In this work, the blow forming process is proposed for the first time to cold form thin metal sheets. Its advantage is connected with the use of equipment with a simple shape and, therefore, less expensive. Specifically, this work evaluates the time needed to form a simplified part; this is a critical aspect to apply this forming process to the food packaging industry. Moreover, this process represents the first step to developing a methodology for evaluating the constitutive equation of thin sheets as an alternative to tensile test that has some critical issues connected with specimens’ manufacturing and test carrying out.