Investigation of Twist Defect in Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) Process

Abstract

Single point incremental forming (SPIF) is a choice of interest in many manufacturing industries due to its wide range of applications. Materials such as copper, aluminum, steel, and many others formed various complex shapes through this process. However, the forming process could sometimes result in process defects, which could strongly influence the formed parts' geometric accuracy. The twist defect is one of them, which incrementally twists the forming sheet with a small angle at each forming step. In this paper, twist phenomena in the SPIF process have been investigated both numerically and experimentally. In the experiment, Aluminum Alloy (AA5052) was used to form a truncated pyramid shape, and a room temperature tensile test has been conducted to achieve the material's tensile properties. Then, the material property used in the simulation study of the SPIF using LS-DYNA software, where twist defect, stresses, strain, and thickness distribution are studied. The results from simulation and experiment show significant similarity against the expected results and this conveys that the proposed FE model of the SPIF process can be used to investigate the presence of twist, distributions of stress and strain, and thinning locations in the formed part.