Investigation of Fracture Depth of Al/Cu Bimetallic Sheet in Single Point Incremental Forming Process

Abstract

Single point incremental sheet forming (SPISF) has demonstrated significant potential to form complex sheet metal parts without using component-specific tools and is suitable for fabricating low-volume functional sheet metal parts economically. In the SPIF process, a ball nose tool moves along a predefined tool path to form the sheet. This work aims to optimize the formability and forming forces of Al/Cu bimetal sheet formed by the single-point incremental forming process. Two levels of tool diameter, step size, tool path and sheet arrangement were considered as the input process parameters. The process parameters influential in the formability and forming forces have been identified using the statistical tool (response table, main effect plot and ANOVA). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to indicate potential differences among the means of variables by testing the amount of population within each sample, which enabled it to show the effects of input variables on output ones. A multi response optimization was conducted to find the optimum values for input parameters by response surface methodology (RSM), and the confirmatory experiment revealed the reliability of RSM for this approach.