Numerical-Experimental Study Regarding the Single Point Incremental Forming Process

The present paper proposes a numerical-experimental comparative study on the single point incremental forming process. A DC04 steel sheet with a thickness of 0.6 mm was used for both the numerical simulation using the finite element method and the experimental research. The type of trajectory used was a spiral trajectory and the finished part obtained was a truncated cone-shaped part. The analysis program used for simulation was Ls-Dyna. The simulations were performed in several variants: with a fixed mesh and with an adaptive mesh, using two different element formulations: 25 (Belytschko-Tsay formulation with thickness stretch) and -16 (fully integrated shell element modified for higher accuracy) and two contact types: automatic surface to surface (ASTS) and forming one way surface to surface (FOSS). The results of the numerical analysis and of the experimental research were focused on determining the major strain, minor strain, thickness reduction and forces at the end of the single point incremental forming process, as well as determining the processing time.