DETERMINATION OF ALUMINUM MECHANICAL PROPERTIES USING SMALL PUNCH TEST AND ADVANCED NUMERICAL METHODS

Matan Tubul ¹ Ziv Ungarish ¹ Tsahi Safar ^1,2 Shai Amar ¹ Eitan Tiferet ^1,2 Itzhak Orion ² Eytan Kochavi ³

¹R&D Department, Nuclear Research Center Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
²Department of Nuclear Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
³Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

The Small Punch Test (SPT) is a mechanical testing method in which a foil is bended to failure using a ball punch, while the force-displacement curve is recorded. This curve is used to obtain the mechanical properties of the tested material. This work describes a method to determine the yield stress and ultimate tensile strength of aluminum alloys using Small Punch Tests (SPT) of 3mm diameter discs and an "Inverse procedure" which uses advanced numerical methods, such as a finite element model (FEM) and artificial Neural network (NN).

The SPT method was examined using experiments, a verified and validated FEM, and comparison to tensile test results. Both Al-6XXX alloys and additive manufactured AlSi10Mg were tested.

The developed FEM and NN model can, in many cases, adequately reproduce the experimental results and is suitable for understanding the stresses/strain distribution during SPT of aluminum miniature samples The applicability of SPT and its ability to obtain the mechanical properties of different aluminum alloys using the "Inverse procedure" will be discussed.