Experimental investigation of laser forming of a saddle shape with spiral irradiating scheme

• Spiral irradiating scheme has been proposed for laser forming of a saddle shape.
• It is proved that this scheme is a powerful method for production of saddle shapes.
• The effects of various process parameters on the saddle shape are investigated.

In this work, spiral irradiating scheme is proposed and investigated experimentally for laser forming of a saddle shape. It is proved by experimental results that this new irradiating scheme is a suitable and powerful method for production of saddle shapes. In addition, the effects of various process parameters such as pitch of spiral path, number of spiral paths, in-to-out spiral path and reversely out-to-in spiral path on the obtained saddle shape are investigated. The results show with decreasing the pitch of spiral path, due to increase in the induced heat flux into the plate, deformations in other words curvatures of obtained saddle shape are considerably increased. Also it is shown that curvatures associated with out-to-in spiral path are larger than curvatures of in-to-out spiral path due to change in geometrical constraints. It is seen from results that with increasing the number of irradiation passes, curvatures of obtained saddle shape are increased considerably.