Influence of some relevant process parameters on the dimensional accuracy in incremental forming: a numerical and experimental investigation

As known, incremental forming is a flexible and innovative sheet metal forming process which allows complex shape shells forming without the need for any die. For these reasons, incremental forming is nowadays suggested for rapid prototyping and customised products. The present paper is focused on material formability in incremental forming and, in particular, on the evaluation and compensation of elastic springback. The latter significantly modifies the imposed shape. For this purpose, a deeper assessment of the process was developed following three different approaches. First of all, a wide experimental investigation on the influence of some relevant process parameters was developed. At the same time, an explicit FEM analysis of incremental forming process was carried out in order to verify its effectiveness and, as a consequence, its ability to be used as a design tool. Furthermore, the obtained parts were analysed by a reverse engineering technique and the measured geometry was numerically compared with the desired one, with the aim to quantify the geometrical discrepancies. In this way, an integrated numerical/experimental procedure is proposed in order to limit the shape defects between the obtained geometry and the desired one.