Bowl-shaped Laser Forming of 304 Stainless Steel Circular Plates Using Radial Heating
P. Kalvettukaran, S. Das, S. Marimuthu and D. Misra
In the field of laser forming, most of the previous experimental and numerical studies on laser forming focused on the bending of sheets with straight-line heating at the middle of the plate, producing simple out-of-plane bending. It is essential to make studies on the generation of complex shapes by the laser forming process. In order to generate complex three-dimensional (3-D) shapes, straight-line heating should be replaced by different irradiation strategies. Implementing alternative irradiation paths to straight paths is more beneficial and necessary for producing complex-shaped products; however, studying complex scanning strategies through experimental techniques is always one of the challenging tasks in understanding the fundamental concepts. Conversely, numerical simulation has greater flexibilities to initiate explorations of such complex scanning strategies and to understand the basics. This work consequently presents the laser forming with radial scanning strategy is explored for the production of a bowl-shaped surface from a circular plate with the help of prescient (finite element (FE) simulation) technique. In particular, the effects of length and number of radial lines on final bowl shape are investigated and its quality is confirmed by relative variation of z-displacement (RVZD) at the outer circumference of the plate top surface. The results reveal that a better bowl shape with minimum distortions at the plate edge could be achieved with a shorter length of the radial line.
Keywords: Laser forming, 304 stainless steel, finite element (FE), complex scanning path, radial scheme, bowl-shaped, relative variation of z-displacement (RVZD), distortions