Search Results

Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an emerging sheet metal prototyping technology where a part is formed as one or more stylus tools are moving in a pre-determined path and deforming the sheet metal locally while the sheet blank is clamped along its periphery. A deformation analysis of incremental forming process is presented in this paper. The analysis includes the development of an analytical model for strain distributions based on part geometry and tool paths; and numerical simulations of the forming process with LS-DYNA. A skew cone is constructed and used as an example for the study. Analytical and numerical results are compared, and excellent correlations are found. It is demonstrated that the analytical model developed in this paper is reliable and efficient in the prediction of strain distributions for incremental forming process.

A detailed investigation of influence of friction on drawbead restraining force modeling is presented in this paper. It is motivated by the need to accurately correlate line bead strengths, which are usually the output of an optimized draw development for controlling materials flow and achieving desired formability, and the physical drawbead geometries required for die face engineering. A plane-strain drawbead model with linear Coulomb friction is first established and the restraining forces corresponding to a range of bead penetration depths are obtained. The comparison of the simulation results with experimental data indicates that, while a larger Coefficient of Friction (COF) has better correlation for smaller bead penetrations and smaller COF does better for deeper bead penetrations, no single COF matches satisfactorily for overall range of bead penetration depths.

Die wear is a significant issue in sheet metal forming particularly for stamping Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) because of their higher strength and microstructure composition. Reliable predictions of the magnitude and distribution of die wear are essential if cost-effective wear-protection strategies are desired in the early stages of tooling development. A die Wear Severity Index (WSI) is introduced in this paper to quantify the magnitude of die wear, which in essence characterizes the frictional energy dissipation per unit area on the die surface throughout the entire forming cycle. It can be readily obtained as part of any finite element simulation of stamping process utilizing incremental solution techniques.