Fast simulation of incremental sheet metal forming by multi-tooling

Fast and precise numerical analyses are necessary for virtual process design in the incremental sheet forming (ISF) process to extend its utilization effectively to industrial applications. Reliable process simulation ensures the short lead-time process advantage by ensuring the right products in the first attempt. Previous studies illustrate that explicit finite elements with mass or time scaling can reduce the simulation time without compromising the results. Still, the simulation time is much higher than the time consumed during real production. Keeping this in view, an approach of multi-tooling, which is rarely investigated, is focused on in this work to minimize the simulation time by utilizing the Abaqus software. The complete toolpath was split into equal segments, and one pair of tools was assigned to each segment. Instead of continuous movement in a single direction, as occurs in the case of single pair of tools, the tool was moving back and forth in the consecutive contours while moving simultaneously in the negative Z-direction in its designated segment. This concept was first trialed on the pyramid shape for sheet thickness variation, geometric precision, Mises stresses, equivalent strain, and forces. After verifying the model with the experimental results for some key quality attributes and simulation results based on single pair of tools (which was used as a reference computation as it represents the actual experiment), it was extended to a large industrial component with five pairs of tools in a double-sided incremental forming (DSIF) process and was compared with the reference computation. The results acquired with multi-tools were in good agreement with experimental and reference computation while reducing the simulation time by more than 200 %. The concept of multi-tooling, which is extensively studied in this work, can be easily implemented without adding a complex algorithm to the finite element model.