EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE COLLAR PRODUCTION ON THE PIERCED FLAT SHEET METAL USING LASER FORMING PROCESS

Abstract

In this paper the limitations in collar production around a hole on a flat sheet metal were studied. In previous work, the collar production technology was developed; however, no research has addressed the limitations of this process. In this research, the scan path sequences were studied according to the developed equivalent simulation first. Then, the amount of the increase in the internal diameter and height was studied and finally, the effective range of the scan radius for forming and the minimum amount of the hole diameter were investigated. It was shown that the best scan sequence was the one which starts from the farther scan radii from the hole toward the hole, and the maximum achieved amount of sheet metal deflection was three times the metal thickness. According to this investigation, the effective region for scan radius was found to be twice the internal hole radius, and the minimum ratio of sheet metal hole diameter to its thickness had to be more than 14.28. The simulation results were shown to have a good agreement with the experimental results performed to confirm this research.