Flow stress model for cold-formed 40HM constructional steel

The paper presents the results of research undertaken to investigate cold forming process for 40HM constructional steel suitable for heat treatment. In the first part of the paper, mechanical properties of this steel and its industrial applications are described. The second part of the paper presents the results of the analysis of flow curves for two kinds of steel specimens: those that were subjected to annealing and those that did not undergo any heat treatment. It was found that the application of heat treatment had a significant effect on improving the forming conditions for this steel at room temperature. The experimental flow curves obtained in a compression test were described by constitutive equations illustrating the dependence between flow stresses and strain value. In order to determine the equation coefficients, the Generalized Reduced Gradient method implemented in Microsoft Excel was used. Based on the obtained equations, a material model will be developed to perform numerical simulations of cold forming for 40HM steel, using FEM-based software that aids the design of metal forming technologies.