Study of the Effective Parameters in Laser Forming of Steel Sheets

Laser forming is a modern and non-contact method for sheet metal bending. Flexibility and rapidness of this forming procedure on one hand and controllability of that on the other hand make this method as one of the most popular manufacturing method. Determination of the effective and optimize parameters for achieving the highest bending angle with no surface melt is one the most important parts of the laser forming process. In this paper, steel sheets have been laser formed in different powers, velocities and beam diameters by a continuous Nd: YAG laser. The results depicted that in the higher powers and smaller beam diameters, the "bending angle- velocity" curve has been shifted to right- side. Furthermore, it has been shown that in smaller beam diameter the trend of bending is reasonably linear and in the higher amounts it is relatively non-linear. In the following, numerical study of laser forming has been done. The results has showed that by increasing of power and decreasing of velocity, beam diameter and work piece thickness the amount of bending angle has been increased. Finally, comparison between numerical and experimental results has showed that they are in a good agreement.