Novel experimental set-up to investigate the wear of coatings for sheet metal forming tools

The use of PVD and CVD coatings has increased significantly thanks to the improved tribological performances they offer in many metalforming processes. Nevertheless the proper coating selection for a specific forming operation is not well established yet, being mainly based on trails and error approaches. The use of FEM-supported analyses may represent an effective support in the optimization of process parameters, but the need of testing procedures and reliable models to describe the mechanical and tribological phenomena at the interface between the dies and the workpiece is still significant. The paper presents a novel experimental set-up for the evaluation of the wear resistance of dies coatings in sheet metal forming operations. A progressive stamping process was taken as reference case and analyzed by numerical analyses. Contact pressures, temperatures and tangential loads at the tools-blank interface were evaluated in each deformation step. TiAlN and CrN were selected as reference coatings and deposited via magnetron sputtering technique. The first part of the research was focused on the design of the novel set-up capable to carry out controlled wear tests in laboratory environment, performed with the parameters obtained from the numerical simulation. The results of such experiments were compared to the ones from standard laboratory tests and with industrial trials, though measurements of loads, of surface roughness evolution and by surface investigations trough Scanning Electron Microscope observations.