Abstract
Digital transformation in metal forming puts forward more and more opportunities for product quality control. The dimensional accuracy of products formed by stretch bending – one of the most widely used technologies for shaping aluminium extruded profiles – is influenced by both upstream and in-process uncertainties. In this paper, the influence of material property and friction-induced uncertainties on the dimensional accuracy in an advanced flexible stretch bending process was investigated with the aim to improve dimensional capabilities. A series of carefully controlled experiments and finite element (FE) simulations were conducted using AA6082-T4 rectangular, hollow profiles. Several loading paths with different pre-stretch strain levels prior to bending were designed and tested for a given geometrical tool configuration. Different levels of flow stress were considered to explore the impact of extrusion- and ageing-induced history-caused property variation on dimensional accuracy. In addition, both lubricated and unlubricated conditions were tested to simulate the influence of friction variation. The final global bend shape (springback) was selected as the key characteristic to analyse the impact of mechanical property and friction variations. Finally, a guideline for minimizing dimensional uncertainty was developed to provide improved process control of formed products.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NTNU Aluminium Product Innovation Center, and the projects TaFF (Grant No.: 317777) and AdaptAl (Grant No.: 314054) sponsored by Research Council of Norway.
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Ma, J., Tronvoll, S.A., Welo, T. (2024). Towards Control of Springback Variability in Novel Flexible Stretch Forming of Aluminium Extrusions. In: Mocellin, K., Bouchard, PO., Bigot, R., Balan, T. (eds) Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Technology of Plasticity - Current Trends in the Technology of Plasticity. ICTP 2023. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42093-1_31
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