Experimental Investigation and Analytical Calculation of the Bending Force for Air Bending of Structured Sheet Metals

Abstract

The increasing interest in structured sheet metals for lightweight constructions and automotive can be seen in recent years. The driving force of this trend is higher stiffness of structured sheet metals in comparison to smooth sheet metals. The structured sheet metal is a sheet metal with a periodical three-dimensional geometry, which is manufactured by hydroforming process. The improved properties of this sheet metal allow the weight reduction of car components and lightweight structures. The purpose of this study is the determination of the force requirements by air bending of structured sheet metal and an analysis of influence factors on the bending force. Moreover an improvement of an analytical calculation of the maximal force for air bending of structured sheet metals is presented. In this work the steels DC04, DX56D-Z and X5CrNi18-10 were investigated. The results have shown that the bending position and the structure location have a big influence on the bending force. All investigated materials have similar behaviour. The largest and smallest bending force can be seen in the bending positions III and II respectively. At the structure location “negative” the maximal bending force is smaller than at the structure location “positive”. The results of the different calculation methods were compared to the experiments. The developed analytical approach provides more precise results than conventional method. In contrast to existing analytical calculation methods it takes into account the influence of the structure location and bending position of structured sheet metals on the bending force