Modeling and validation of deformation process for incremental sheet forming

Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an emerging sheet metal prototyping technology where a part is formed as one or more stylus tools are moving in a pre-determined path and deforming the sheet metal locally while the sheet blank is clamped along its periphery. A deformation analysis of incremental forming process is presented in this paper. The analysis includes the development of an analytical model for strain distributions based on part geometry and tool paths, numerical simulations of the forming process with LS-DYNA, and experimental validation of strain predictions using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. Three kinds of parts include hyperbolic cone, skew cone and elliptical cone are constructed and used as examples for the study. Analytical, numerical and experimental results are compared, and excellent correlations are found. It is demonstrated that the analytical model developed in this paper is reliable and efficient in the prediction of strain distributions for incremental forming process. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Society of Manufacturing Engineers.