Investigation of material specifications changes during laser tube bending and its influence on the modification and optimization of analytical modeling

Abstract

Nowadays, laser tube bending process has become commonly used in laser material processing and fabrication fields because of its ability to produce such forms and shapes that cannot be achieved by normal mechanical bending tools. The process can avoid and overcome most of bending defects like wall thinning, wrinkling, spring back and ovalization. This investigation focused on the experimental, analytical modeling, and numerical simulation to give more understanding of the process. In this work a high power pulsed Nd-Yag laser of maximum average power laser 300 (W) emitting at 1064nm and fiber coupled has been used to irradiate stainless steel 304 tubes of diameter 12.7mm, 0.6mm thickness and 60mm in length. An analytical model has been used to determine the bending angle by using Matlab program software. The changes of material specification during the laser tube bending process due to the temperature rise has been studied and the analytical model has been modified and enhanced. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) was used to optimize the analytical and experimental results and reduce the mean absolute error.