Local sheet thickening by in-plane swaging

This paper presents a new sheet-bulk forming process to locally pile-up material in thin sheets for subsequent forming or joining operations. An analytical solution is proposed for explaining the influence of the major process parameters, estimating the thickening of the pile-up material and determining the normal and thrust forces applied by the tools. The approach is built upon the slip-line field theory under plane strain assumptions and results are compared against finite element predictions and experimental results using Aluminium EN AW-1050A (EN 573-3) sheets with 3 mm thickness. The last part of the paper introduces a modified tool geometry that is able to control the pile-up material for subsequent mechanical fastening operations.