Finite element simulation of the punchless piercing process with Lemaitre damage model

The punchless piercing is a process that uses highly pressurized fluid instead of the conventional punch to make holes into the sheet metal. This process has many advantages over the conventional method for piercing various shaped holes into very thin strips of metal, composite, etc. An important cost advantage comes from not having to use a punch. Another important advantage comes from the top quality of pierced holes produced by punchless piercing, as no secondary finishing process will be needed for removing burrs typically found in conventional cutting processes. The ABAQUS/Explicit FEM code coupled with Lemaitre damage model has been used to more precisely characterize the punchless piercing process of a copper sheet. The formulation adopted for this purpose uses an established and efficient stress integration algorithm and development of a user material subroutine (VUMAT). For verification, the computed results have been compared with those of the experimental results in the literature and shown to be in good agreement with each other. The results obtained from this work are expected to be of significant interest to automotive and aerospace industries interested in using the punchless piercing process.