Analysis of Formability in Single Point Incremental Forming Using Finite Element Simulations

Incremental forming is a most flexible process to manufacture custom specific sheet metal parts without any dedicated dies. It uses a hemi-spherical headed tool to deform the sheet in to required three dimensional shapes. The path of the tool is controlled by a part-program generated using computer aided manufacturing software. In this paper the formability of extra deep drawing steel is investigated through numerical simulations. For this varying wall angle conical and pyramidal frustums are used as test geometries. These geometries are designed with four different generatrices namely: circular, elliptical, parabolic and exponential. The formability of all these eight geometries is tested using analytical FLD curve in LS-DYNA. The maximum wall angles obtained from numerical simulations are compared with experimental values. A good correlation was observed between experimental and simulation results.