Thin-walled tube bending has common applications in the automobile and aerospace industries. The rotary-draw-bending method is a complex physical process with multi-factor interactive effects and is one of the advanced tube forming processes with high efficiency, high forming precision, low consumption and good flexibility for bending angle changes. However, it may cause a wrinkling phenomenon,...

Tailor-made blanks are sheet metal assemblies with different thicknesses and/or materials and/or surface coatings. A monolithic sheet can be machined to make the required thickness variations that is referred as tailor machined blanks. Due to the thickness variation in tailor machined blanks, laser bending of these blanks is more complicated than monolithic plates. In this article, laser formin...

The choice of the process parameters in the conventional tube bending forming is often based on experience and adjusted by repeated bending tests. The method of constantly testing to adjust has seriously affected the production efficiency and increased production costs. In this paper, neural network is used to establish the intelligent prediction model of the pipe forming process parameters. Th...

Laser forming as a springback-free and noncontact forming technique has been under active investigation over the last decade. Previous investigations are mainly focused on forming of large and thick workpieces using high power lasers, with less work on precision, micro-scale bending of small and thin sheets. In this work, a 4 W continuous wave argon ion laser is used as the energy source, and t...

Laser forming is a thermal forming process which uses laser beam irradiation to produce the desired final forms. In this article, the effect of temperature gradient across  Al 6061-T6 aluminum sheets on bending angle is studied. Input parameters including laser power, scan velocity, beam diameter, and sheet thickness are the effective process parameters which influence the temperature gradient....

Dynamics of bending of NaCl whisker is studied with use of high speed camera VFU-1 synchronized with high power electron accelerator GIN-600. The dynamics of bending turns to be non-monotonous and quite complicated. The figures of etching of whisker after bombardment by electron beam are analysed, thin polygonization in samples is found. The time of bending in experiment and time of forming of ...

Geometric effects play an important role in laser forming process; however, few investigations have been reported on the geometric size effect other than sheet thickness. In this paper, the influence of size effect, including sheet width and sheet length, on laser induced deformation is experimentally, numerically and analytically investigated. A size matrix is designed to cover a wide range of...

Laser forming of sheet metal offers the advantages of requiring no hard tooling and thus reduced cost and increased flexibility. It also enables forming of some materials and shapes that are not possible now. In single-axis laser bending of plates, 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,...

Laser bending is an advanced process in sheet metal forming in which a laser heat source is used to shape the metal sheet. In this paper, temperature distribution in a mild steel sheet metal is investigated numerically and experimentally. Laser heat source is applied through curved paths in square sheet metal parts. Finite element (FE) simulation is performed with the ABAQUS/CAE standard softwa...