Solid granules medium sheet metal forming technology is a technology that applies solid granules medium instead of rigid punch (or elastomer,liquid) to finish the sheet metal flexible die forming. Based on the experiments and study of the performance of solid granules medium material, the experimental sheet metal forming die and device were designed and manufactured.The cylinder part was trial-produced successfully by the forming experiments as well.By the experiments, the changing law of
wall-thickness of the cylinder part in different stages during the forming process was obtained. The shape change in the free deformation zone might be described accurately by the functional model of a circular curve. A finite element model of sheet metal forming was set up by taking the solid granules medium as a continuum medium. The comparisons
between the results from the numerical simulation and the experiments show that the results from the numerical computation using the continuum material model are close to those from the practical testing.
