Parametric Studies of Vacuum Assisted Laser Forming

Abstract

Laser forming of sheet metal offers the advantages of requiring no hard tooling and thus reduced cost and increased exibility. It also enables forming of some materials and shapes that are not possible now. In single-axis laser bending of sheet, the bending edge is found to be somewhat curved and the bending angle varies along the laser-scanning path. These phenomena are termed edge effects, which adversely affect the accuracy of the bending and result in stress. Numerical investigations are carried out to study the process transiency and the mechanism of the edge effects. Temperature dependency of material properties and strain-rate dependency of low stress are considered in the numerical simulation to improve prediction accuracy. Numerical results are validated in experiments. Patterns of edge effects and resultant stress distributions are examined under a wide range of conditions.

FE analysis includes a static coupled thermal-structural analysis accounting for the temperature dependency of the thermal and mechanical properties of the material. The time dependent temperature and bending angle have been obtained from the simulation. (Material property of AISI 1010 and pure aluminum is used in FE model and experiments).Three dimensional FE-simulations model has been developed with the help of ANSYS software.