Thermal modeling and experimental investigations on warm incremental sheet forming of hard to form materials

Abstract

Warm Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an innovative manufacturing technique for producing prototypes and sheet metal parts with complex geometry. Manufacturing of sheet metal products for aerospace, automobile and biomedical applications is a challenging task, because it demands the fabrication of complex intricate structures. For products with complex part geometries the manufacturing cost of dies and punches increases, since its fabrication becomes complicated because of intricate shapes involved in it and also time taken for design and fabrication is too high. This is highly undesirable for Research and Development (RandD) and for low volume production environment. This provide the research scope for warm ISF process, where complex part geometries could be formed without use of any dies at high temperature with enhanced characteristics. Warm ISF process could be considered as a viable replacement, since it form the components by making use of single generic tool for infinite variety of shapes with great potential for short production runs of new and replacement parts. To implement the warm ISF process for manufacturing of aerospace, automobile and biomedical parts, better understanding of formability limit, geometrical accuracy, sheet thinning and forming behaviour of materials is important. The complex geometry produced by conventional manufacturing process may fail to achieve desired surface finish, geometrical accuracy and formability due to process incapabilities. Maximum achievement of geometrical accuracy and formability is possible with warm ISF process due to localized heating associated with incremental deformation technique. newline Warm Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an innovative manufacturing technique for producing prototypes and sheet metal parts with complex geometry. Manufacturing of sheet metal products for aerospace, automobile and biomedical applications is a challenging task, because it demands the fabrication of complex intricate structures. For products with complex part geometries the manu