Effects of thickness reduction in cold rolling process on the formability of sheet metals using ANFIS

Cold rolling has detrimental effect on the formability of sheet metals. It is, however, inevitable in producing sheet high quality surfaces. The effects of cold rolling on the forming limits of stretch sheets are not investigated comprehensively in the literature. In this study, a through experimental study is conducted to observe the effect of different cold rolling thickness reduction on the formability of sheet metals. Since the experimental procedure of such tests are costly, an artificial intelligence is also adopted to predict effects of cold thickness reduction on the formability of the sheet metals. In this regard, St14 sheets are examined using tensile, metallography, cold rolling and Nakazima’s hemi-sphere punch experiments. The obtained data are further utilized to train and test an adaptive neural network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) model. The results indicate that cold rolling reduces the formability of the sheet metals under stretch loading condition. Moreover, the tensile behavior of the sheet alters considerably due to cold thickness reduction of the same sheet metal. The trained ANFIS model also successfully trained and tested in prediction of forming limits diagrams. This model could be used to determine forming limit strains in other thickness reduction conditions. It is discussed that determination of forming limit diagrams is not an intrinsic property of a chemical composition of the sheet metals and many other factors must be taken into account.