Investigation and optimization on the formability of aluminum 1050/stainless steel 304L bilayer sheets fabricated by cold roll bonding considering the Box-Behnken method

Composite metal sheets have found extensive applications thanks to their high corrosion and wear resistance, as well as greater strength, stiffness, and formability relative to the base sheets. Stainless steel composite sheets account for over 80% of the metallic composite sheets. Their higher performance and lower costs have increased their applications in the food and automotive industries. This study experimentally addressed the formability of the Al 1050/Stainless Steel 304 L bilayer sheets prepared through the cold rolling process. After designing the experiment using the response surface method, considering the layer thickness and reduction ratio of the rolling process, the bilayer sheets were prepared using the cold roll bonding process. Formability included the forming limit diagram, the magnitude of FLD0, and elongation, which were derived by Nakazima and tensile tests. Then, the formability was optimized as a function of input parameters considering the Box-Behnken method. To this end, a new criterion was presented to compare the formability of the sheets. This criterion can be used to assess the formability of a sheet considering various loading modes. Microstructural observations justified the variations in the formability of the bilayer sheets against the input parameters, i.e., thickness ratio and reduction ratio. The results indicated that the formability of the Al 1050/Stainless Steel 304 L bilayer sheet (i.e., safe forming region) reached its maximum value at tAl=4mm;tSS=0.8mm;andr=45%.