Investigation of the deformation stability in the incremental sheet forming process

¹ Department of Plasticity Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK
³ Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

^a Corresponding author: e-mail: b.lu@sheffield.ac.uk

Abstract

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is a highly versatile and flexible process for rapid manufacturing of complex sheet metal parts. One of the unique characters of the ISF process is the improved formability comparing to conventional sheet forming process. This may be due to the localized deformation nature, which increases the deformation stability in the ISF process. Although many hypotheses have been proposed, there is no direct modelling and calculation of the ISF deformation stability. Aiming to obtain a better understanding of the ISF process, an analytical model was developed to investigate and analyse the material deformation stability in this work. Based on the analytical evaluation of stress variations and force equilibrium, a mathematical relationship between the maximum forming angle and the process stability condition was established. To validate the developed model, experiments were carried out by forming a hyperbolic part made of AA1100 material. The maximum forming angle, as an indicator to the ISF formability, was employed compare the analytical evaluation and experimental result. It was found that the ISF deformation stability is one of the key factors that affect the ISF formability.