A novel forming method of aluminum sheet based on superposition principle of electromagnetic local forming

A novel forming method aimed at large size aluminum sheet is introduced. In this method, aluminum sheet is clamped between a common flat spiral electromagnetic actuator and a punch matrix. Driven by pulsed electromagnetic force and restrained by punch matrix, the blank sheet will form local shallow dome accordingly. Moving actuator along sheet surface and triggering the pulsed power generator in sequence results in dome matrix that is uniformly distributed. Superposition of those spherical domes leads to macroscopically curved figuration of aluminum sheet. This paper demonstrates the newly proposed method experimentally, which verifies its feasibility. The mechanism analysis of this method is also presented using a simplified analytical model. The results show that this novel method is feasible and can be explained by the proposed mechanism well.