No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Polymer injection forming (PIF) is a recent advancement in manufacturing of plasticmetal hybrid products. It is a combination of injection molding and sheet metal forming in which the molten polymer additionally serves as a pressure medium. This paper presents fundamental investigations on the use of polymer melt as a pressure medium in sheet metal forming. The development of forming pressure and localized blank temperature as a result of polymer injection is analyzed. The experiments are performed using aluminum alloy. The experiments comprise the bulging of a (free form) dome and stretch forming of a cup using thermoplastic polypropylene as a pressure medium. A simple approach is presented to model a combined process. An incremental lagrangian formulation is used to describe the polymer flow and sheet metal deformation. The Newtonian behavior of the polymer melt is modeled as rigid-viscoplastic medium. Standard finite element coupling is used to model the mutual metal-polymer interaction. The simulation results in the form of forming pressure profile, localized blank temperature profile, formed shape, and strain distribution are presented and validated with experimentally obtained results.