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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Manufacturing Processes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/manpro

Electromagnetic incremental forming of integral panel under

different discharge conditions
Kun Guo, Xinpeng Lei, Mei Zhan , Jingqiang Tan
State Key Laboratory of Solidication Processing, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian 710072, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A method for forming panels through the electromagnetic incremental forming (EMIF) process with coil
Received 5 August 2016 shifting is presented in this study. The forming effect of the panels under different EMIF process conditions
Received in revised form 21 January 2017 was explored through experiments. The results show that the two consecutive discharges method of a
Accepted 22 January 2017
small voltage followed by a high voltage in a xed position was helpful for improving the forming depth
Available online xxx
and shape deviation to die of the panel; the increase of the capacitance over a certain range was helpful
for improving the forming depth; a large position distance was benecial to improve the forming depth;
Keywords:
and a loading path of side-midst-side with a large discharge voltage in the subsequent position could
Electromagnetic incremental forming
Panel
effectively improve the forming depth and shape deviation to die. These forming rules show that EMIF
Sequential discharge is feasible for forming panels using a suitable loading path with reasonable capacitance and discharge
Loading path positions combined with two consecutive discharges of a small voltage followed by a high voltage in a
Discharge position xed position.
Coil shifting 2017 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the development of advanced equipment in the elds of
aeronautics and astronautics, it is necessary to expand the transport
capacity, reduce energy consumption and increase the service life
of the advanced equipment. For these requirements, thin-walled,
lightweight and complicated components are needed. Because of
their light weight, high stiffness and high structural efciency, inte-
gral panels with high-stiffener have become important structural
bearings of modern advanced aircrafts and widely used in modern
aircrafts as demonstrated (e.g., [1]). Conventional forming pro-
cesses for integral panels include shot peen forming, press bending,
creep age forming, etc. Shot peen forming is a process by which
bombarding the surface of a metal sheet with a stream of small
hard shot with sufcient kinetic energy can form a specic shape,
and has been used especially for contouring integral aircraft skin
panels as demonstrated (e.g., [2]). The peen forming process can
be controlled by adjusting the process parameters, such as veloc-
ity, action area and spray angle. However, because it is subject to
formability, shot peen forming is mainly used for forming simple rib
structure panels and panels in which the rib is not high, such as in
the peen forming of wing skins case study presented by Burmeister
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhanmei@nwpu.edu.cn (M. Zhan).
[3]. Creep age forming (CAF) uses materials in which creep can pro-
duce stress relaxation in the aging temperature, thus the materials
gradually experience plastic deformation under the elastic loading.
Eberl et al. [4] stated that CAF is one of the few processing tech-
niques that has been proven by researchers to be viable for the
production of extra-large integral airframe structures (IAS). This
method offers the advantages of small springback and high form-
ing precision. However, Zhang et al. [5] demonstrated that CAF of
large panels only applies to materials with age hardening proper-
ties, thus the amount of springback of the panels after CAF is large,
the t between the panel and the die is poor, and the energy con-
sumption and cost are high. Press bending is a process by which
a die makes the panel bend under the action of mechanical pres-
sure. The research of Munroe et al. [6] and Yan et al. [7] showed
that Press bending has become an important method for manu-
facturing integral panels because of its many advantages, such as
low tooling cost, short cycle time and adaptability to different con-
tours. However, Yang and Wang [8] reported that press bending
is operator-dependent and the process parameters should be cho-
sen carefully to avoid buckling and fracture on stiffeners and to
form the desired contour. Lang and Xu [9] claimed that in the panel
press bending process, plastic deformation only produces on the
top of the rib and the web always underwent elastic deformation.
Furthermore, after bending, the panel exhibited large springback,
which resulted in low precision of the nal panel shape, thus it is
difcult to meet the requirements of large integral panel parts.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010
1526-6125/ 2017 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Guo K, et al. Electromagnetic incremental forming of integral panel under different discharge
conditions. J Manuf Process (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010
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Electromagnetic forming (EMF) is an impulse or high-speed
forming process using a pulsed magnetic eld to apply Lorentz
forces to workpieces preferably made of a highly electrically con-
ductive material. During this process, there is even no working
medium or mechanical contact between the workpiece and the dies
as presented (e.g., [10]). Therefore, the cost of die manufacturing
and production costs of EMF can be reduced. Because of its high
deformation velocity, the formability limit can be increased and
the production cycle can be shortened. In addition to the previous
advantages, the required equipment of EMF is relatively simple,
as demonstrated by Seth et al. [11] and Arumugam et al. [12].
Therefore, in the last few decades, an increasing need to produce
high strength components more economically than by conven-
tional forming processes caused a renewed interest in EMF, which
has been widely used in the mechanical (e.g., [13]), electronic (e.g.,
[14]), automotive (e.g., [15]), aerospace (e.g., [6]) and other elds.
The coil and its position are xed in EMF. Because of the iner-
tia effects of sheet metal in the process of EMF, EMF with a xed
coil is limited in application to local forming (such as small l-
let region forming) and deep drawing of some sheet metals. For
this purpose, some researchers use coils that can produce differ-
ent forming effects or methods that combine the EMF with some
conventional forming techniques to solve these problems. The
research of Kamal et al. [16] showed that the forming precision
of the local details of the sheet could be improved by changing the
coil in the EMF. Researchers at Ohio State University successively
proposed Matched Tool-Electromagnetic (MT-EM) hybrid sheet
forming, which was proposed by Vohnout [17], and Electromag-
netically Assisted Stamping (EMAS), which is proposed by Shang
[18] and Shang and Gaehn [19]. EMAS combines the advantages of
conventional stamping and EMF, and has been applied to the form-
ing of the AA6111-T4 aluminum alloy car door inner panel and the
small llet components by Imbert and Worswick [20,21]. With the
requirements of large size and cost reductions, Cui et al. [22] pro-
posed an electromagnetic incremental forming (EMIF) technology
and Cui et al. [23] demonstrated its feasibility by changing the posi-
tion of a single coil in the direction of three degrees of freedom
to deep draw large aluminum alloy parts. Cui et al. [24] proposed
an incremental electromagnetic-assisted stamping (IEMAS) tech-
nology with radial magnetic pressure and adopted it for the deep
drawing of a cylindrical cup.
Considering the large size and complex shapes of integral panels,
traditional EMF and EMAS are difcult to apply directly because of
the limited action scope and depth of the magnetic eld force from
the coil with a xed position. Therefore, it is necessary to form the
integral panel through shifting of the coil, i.e., using EMIF (as shown
Fig. 1. Schematic of the EMIF process.
Please cite this article in press as: Guo K, et al. Electromagnetic incremental forming of integral panel under different discharge
conditions. J Manuf Process (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010
in Fig. 1). Compared to traditional EMF, EMIF increases some of
the new forming parameters, such as discharge position, discharge
pass, loading path, coil overlap, etc., and there may be complex
coupling effects among these new and common parameters. There-
fore, EMIF is a more complicated process than EMF. At present,
only a few researchers have conducted studies on EMIF. Zhao et al.
[25] analyzed the forming uniformity under different coil overlap
rates and different loading paths during the tube electromagnetic
incremental bulging process. The results of this study showed that
the higher the coil overlap rate, the better the forming uniformity,
whereas the forming efciency decreases. Cui et al. [26] proposed a
new forming method named incremental electromagnetic assisted
stamping with radial magnetic pressure to draw a deep cylindrical
cup, and set up a 3D nite element model to predict the complex
deformation process. The results showed that this method could
signicantly decrease the tensile stress and thickness reduction at
the easily broken position, and obtain uniform stress distribution
in comparison to traditional stamping. Cui et al. [21] analyzed the
effect of coil moving path, discharge pass and discharge parameters
on the electromagnetic incremental deep drawing of sheet metals.
They reported that sheet components with good t to the die were
obtained by adopting reasonable process parameters. Furthermore,
Cui et al. [27] analyzed the effect of the subsequent deformation on
the deformed sheet region, material owing and the strain distri-
bution of the EMIF sheet forming process through 3D numerical
simulations and experiments.
Because of the large scale and complexity of the integral pan-
els, it is necessary to adopt EMIF. The characteristics of large size,
high ribs, and high structural rigidity, especially the complex and
staggered high ribs grid structure, of integral panels lead to form-
ing mechanisms and laws in EMIF that are different from those of
pipes and metal sheets in EMIF. Therefore, it is vital to study the
EMIF process of integral panels. This report studied the forming
effects of a panel under different capacitances, discharge passes,
loading paths, position distances and panel structures to explore
the feasibility of forming large integral panels by EMIF.
2. Experimental materials and methods
2.1. Materials and blank
The experimental material used in this paper was 2A12-T4 alu-
minum alloy. Because ribs with a grid shape structure are always
applied in aircraft panels, a grid ribs stiffened panel blank was
designed in this study, as shown in Fig. 2. The main forming region
is located in the middle of the blank, which has dimensions of
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Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of a grid ribs stiffened panel blank (a) and photograph of the blank after milling (b).

100 mm 150 mm. In the main forming region, there are criss-
crossed rectangular grid ribs with a length of 86 mm and a width
31 mm. To reduce the stress concentration, a transition radius of
3 mm was designed at the crisscrossed position of the ribs. For the
comparative analysis, at panels with the same length and width
were also chosen as the experimental blank.

2.2. Die

Single curvature panels are a common form of plane panels;

therefore, in this study, a single curvature die was designed and
manufactured for EMF panels, as shown in Fig. 3. The overall size of
the die was 230 mm 150 mm 50 mm (length width height).
A 150 mm 100 mm deformation zone was located in the middle of
the die and the radius of the curvature of the deformation zone was
80 mm. There is a blank holder zone on each side of the deformation
zone. Because of the large deformation rate of the material, stress
concentration would be generated on the sharp corner during EMF,
which can cause material fracture. Therefore, a large llet transition
of 10 mm was adopted between the die deformation zone and the
two blank holder zones.
2.3. Coil structure
Compared to the uniform pressure coil, rectangular coil, ellipti-
cal coil, and special-shaped coil, a at spiral coil has the advantages
of mature fabrication technology, reliable performance, and the
ability to bear a large discharge load. Thus, a at spiral coil was
adopted in this study and its simplied form is shown in Fig. 4. A
4 mm 2 mm copper wire was used in the coil with 10 winding
turns and a layer number of 3. In the EMF process, the central part
of the coil is greatly affected by the electromagnetic force and the
heat dissipation condition of the inner coil is poor. Therefore, the
temperature of the inner coil is higher than that of the outside as
presented (e.g., [28]), which leads to the inner coil being more prone
Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of the structure of a at spiral coil.
to overload failure. Therefore, the distance between two adjacent
turns of the coil in this study was designed to gradually increase
from the outside to the inside (the distance between the gradients
is shown in Table 1). This design allows for more epoxy resin to ll
in the inner part of the coil, thus improving the support force of the
inner coil and subsequently improving the life of the coil, and this
view was veried in Ahmed et al. [29].
2.4. Discharge position and loading path
To conveniently describe the discharge position and loading
path, a coordinate system is dened in Fig. 5 in which the coor-
dinate origin is set in the center of the original panel blank, the X
axis is set along the width direction, and the Y axis is set along the
longitudinal direction of the blank. Three discharge positions were
designed along the X axis direction, including a midst position B and
two side positions A and C (Fig. 5). The two side positions A and C
are symmetric about the midst position B. In this study, for single
discharge position EMF, only the midst position B was adopted. For
the two discharge positions forming, the two side positions A and C

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the die (a) and photograph of the die (b).

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conditions. J Manuf Process (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010
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Table 1
Parameters of the three layers of coil with variable distances between the turns.

Parameters Values Parameters Values Parameters Values

Wire specication 2 mm 4 mm Layer distance d 0.4 mm Turn distance d5 0.95 mm

Total number of turns N 30 Turn distance d1 1.8 mm Turn distance d6 0.95 mm
Coil layers 3 Turn distance d2 1.8 mm Turn distance d7 0.7 mm
Coil inner diameter Rc 7 mm Turn distance d3 1.7 mm Turn distance d8 0.7 mm
Coil Height H 12.8 mm Turn distance d4 1.2 mm Turn distance d9 0.7 mm

Fig. 5. Diagram of discharge positions. Fig. 7. Schematic diagram of installation.

were adopted. For three discharge positions forming, three loading
paths were adopted: the rst is the side-midst-side (SMS) load-
ing path which the coil discharges from one side position to the
midst position, then to the other side position, including two iden-
tical paths A-B-C and C-B-A(as shown in Fig. 6); the second is the
side-side-midst (SSM) loading path from one side position to the
other side position, then to the midst position, including two iden-
tical paths A-C-B and C-A-B; and the third is the midst-side-side
(MSS) loading path from the midst position to one side position,
then to the other side position, including two identical paths B-A-C
and B-C-A.
The schematic diagram of the EMIF installation of the internal
panel is showed in Fig. 7. To realize the precise positioning and
sliding of the coil in the experiment, two blank holder blocks with
guide grooves and two coil support blocks with arc grooves and
guide grooves were simultaneously connected by bolts. Two arc
grooves were adopted to support the coil. The discharge positions
and the distance of the coil shifting were manually measured and
controlled by a vernier caliper, and the initial gap between the bot-
tom surface of the copper wire and the top of the ribs in the blank
panel was set to 5 mm for each experiment.
2.5. Capacitance and discharge voltage
The capacitance, C, in the experiments was set at three levels
of 80 F, 160 F, and 320 F according to the capability of the
electrical system used in the experiment. These values take into
considering that the rated discharge power of the coil is 7.84 kJ
at continuous work and the rated work voltages at these three
capacitance levels were determined as 14 kV, 9.9 kV, and 7 kV,
respectively, in the experiments. During the EMF process, the defor-
mation of the material in the local zone of the blank close to the coil
is relatively large. This leads to the increase in the distance between
the local zone of the blank and the coil, thus the energy utilization

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of SMS loading path of panel EMIF.

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conditions. J Manuf Process (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010
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Fig. 8. Experimental results of different workpieces.
rate decreases in the subsequent discharge passes. Therefore, to
improve the energy utilization rate in the subsequent discharge
passes, it is necessary to take a small discharge power or voltage at
the rst discharge pass, and take a large discharge power or voltage
in the subsequent discharge forming process.
3. Results and discussion
This study aims to reveal the inuence of discharge capacitance,
discharge pass, loading path and position distance on the formabil-
ity of panels. Thus, EMIF experiments under different capacitances,
discharge passes, loading paths and position distance were per-
formed, and some panels were obtained, as shown in Fig. 8. Then,
comparative analyses were performed on the distribution of form-
ing depth and shape deviation to the die along the X center path
and the Y center path of the panels (Fig. 9) in this section.
3.1. Effect of capacitance
Three EMF experiments with one pass discharge only in the
midst position under various capacitances, C, of 80 F, 160 F, and
320 F with the corresponding rated work voltages of 14 kV, 9.9 kV,
and 7 kV, respectively, were conducted to study the inuence of the
capacitance. Considering that a panel with high and wide ribs and
a thick web is difcult to deform, in the experiments under various
capacitances, grid stiffened panel blanks with high and wide ribs
(height and width both 4 mm) and a thick web (thickness 4 mm)
were used.
The forming depth, H, and the shape deviation to the die,
D, along the Y center path of the three experimental parts are
shown in Fig. 10. As seen in Fig. 10, the forming depth increases
with increasing capacitance. This indicates that a large capacitance
under identical discharge powers is helpful for increasing the form-
ing depth. As the capacitance increases, the current skin depth
increases and the electromagnetic force can be generated in much
deeper layers of the panels, thus increasing the amount of defor-
mation. In other words, the increasing capacitance is conducive to
improving the conversion efciency of electric energy into mate-
rial deformation energy. From Fig. 10, it is also observed that with
the capacitance increasing, the forming depth increased. And, the
Fig. 9. Measurement paths on workpiece.
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5
Fig. 10. Forming depth and shape deviation to the die of panels under different
capacitance.
difference in the maximum forming depths at 80 F and 160 F is
5 mm, while that at 160 F and 320 F is less than 1 mm. This result
is attributed to magnetic eld enhancement at increasing capaci-
tance, which may produce more magnetic leakage, resulting in a
slower increase of the forming depth. The variations of the form-
ing depth with capacitance suggest that the shape deviation of the
panel to the die can be improved, but the improvement decreases as
the capacitance increases, as shown in Fig. 10. Therefore, consider-
ing the effect of capacitance on forming depth and shape deviation
to the die and the energy conversion efciency together, it is rea-
sonable to adopt a moderate capacitance, such as 160 F, which is
neither too large nor too small.
3.2. Effect of discharge pass on the same position
To study the inuence of the discharge pass on the same posi-
tion, two EMIF experiments of discharging once and twice on the
rst discharge position and then discharging once on the second
position were designed as shown in Table 2. The forming perfor-
mance of the EMIF process of stiffened panel can be inferred by
that of the bending of T-shaped workpiece, since the EMIF process
of stiffened panel is very similar to the bending forming process of
T-shaped workpiece. And according to the calculation formula1 of
inertia moment of the cross section on ribs about T-shaped work-
piece, the stiffened workpiece with narrow ribs and a thin web has
small bending strength relatively. This group of experiments was
performed on such two panel blanks with a rib height of 4 mm, a rib
width of 2 mm, and a web thickness of 2 mm. A small capacitance
of 80 F was used to avoid the collision of the workpiece with the
die and then rebound.
The forming depth, H, and the shape deviation to the die D along
the X center path of the panels obtained under different discharge
passes are shown in Fig. 11(a). And to provide good evaluation of the
forming uniformity of integral panel, an index DRMS was proposed,
which was the root mean square of forming depth, as shown in
Fig. 11(b).

n

 (Di )2

i=1
DRMS =
n
1
 h+t 2 1
1
Iy = 12
bh3 + 2
Zm bh + 12
Bt 3 + Zm
2
Bt, where the b and h are the width
and height of the ribs, and the t is the thickness of the web.
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Table 2
Experiment conditions of EMIF of panels under different discharge passes.

Discharge pass on the X coordinate of Voltage of pass X coordinate of Voltage of pass X coordinate of Voltage of pass
rst discharge position pass one (mm) one (kV) pass two (mm) two (kV) pass three (mm) three (kV)

Two 28 9.9 28 12 +28 12

One 28 9.9 +28 12 0 0

where Di was the measurement value of forming depth of feature than that in the previous pass to improve the uniformity of the
point i (i = 1, 2, . . ., n), n was the number of feature points, W was panels. Because the motion of the material away from the coil in
the average value of forming depth. the previous pass would increase the distance between the work-
The results showed that the forming depth of the panels under piece and the coil in the subsequent pass, which would weaken the
discharging twice at the rst position was slightly larger than that electromagnetic force of the next pass. Panels with a rib height of
under discharging once (one pass) on the same position, and the 4 mm, a rib width of 2 mm, and a web thickness of 2 mm were used
t to die of the former panel was distributed more uniformly in this group of experiments. According to the analysis in Section
(Fig. 11(b)). This result indicates that discharging twice at the same 3.1, a moderate capacitance of 160 F was adopted in this group of
position can improve forming depth and shape deviation to die. This experiments.
is because that after discharging once, the gap between the work- The forming depth the shape deviation to the die and the form-
piece and the coil increases when discharged a second time at the ing uniformity along the X center path of the experimental parts
same position, causing a signicant decrease in the electromagnetic obtained under these three loading paths are shown in Fig. 12(a)
force during the second pass compared to the rst pass. and (b).
As seen in Fig. 12, the forming depth of the panels obtained
3.3. Effect of loading path under the loading path of SMS, from one side position to the midst
position then to the other side position, was more uniform than
To study the effect of the loading path, a group of EMIF experi- that under the other two loading paths, and the DRMS was also small
ments with three various loading paths on three discharge positions (Fig. 12(b)). The forming depth at the X side (corresponding to the
were designed, as shown in Table 3. In this group of experiments, rst side position C) was slightly less than that of the +X side (cor-
the discharge voltage in each subsequent pass was set to be no less responding to the second side position A), which was caused by the

25
25
Shape deviation to die (mm)

12

Shape deviation to die (mm)

H-One pass D-One pass H-SMS 12
H-Two passes D-Two passes H-SSM
20
Forming depth (mm)

20
Forming depth (mm)

H-MSS
9
9
15
15
6 D-SMS 6
10 D-SSM
10
D-MSS
3
5 3
5

0 0
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 0 0
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
X coordinate (mm)
X coordinate (mm)
(a) (a)
1.0
0.8

0.7
0.8

0.6

0.6 0.5
DRMS
DRMS

0.4
0.4
0.3

0.2
0.2
0.1

0.0 0.0
One pass Two pass SMS SSM MSS

Discharge times Loading path

(b) (b)
Fig. 11. Forming depth and shape deviation to the die of panels under different Fig. 12. Forming depth and shape deviation to the die of panels under different
discharge passes. loading paths.

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Table 3
Experimental conditions of EMIF under different loading paths.

Loading path X coordinate of Voltage of pass X coordinate of Voltage of pass X coordinate of Voltage of pass
pass one (mm) one (kV) pass two (mm) two (kV) pass three (mm) three (kV)

SMS (C-B-A) 50 7 0 8 50 9.9

SSM (C-A-B) 50 7 +50 8 0 9.9
MSS (B-C-A) 0 7 50 8 +50 9.9

low discharge voltage at the X side where the rst side position 25
12
is located. H-S=70mm

Shape deviation to die (mm)

The forming depth of the panels obtained under the SSM loading H-S=56mm
20
path was gradually enlarged from left to right along the X direction H-S=40mm

Forming depth (mm)

9
and the forming depth of the right side was obviously larger than
that of the left, indicating that the forming uniformity of the work- 15
piece is poor (as shown in Fig. 12(a)). This is because the discharge
6
voltage of the +X side discharge position (the second side position
10
A) was greater than that of the X side (the rst side position C).
Moreover, the distance between the workpiece near the +X side
D-S=70mm 3
discharge position and the coil was not too large as a result of the 5
deformation within the zone, resulting from the action of the X D-S=56mm
discharge position at the rst side position discharging. D-S=40mm
0 0
The forming depth obtained under the MSS loading path was -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
approximately upward convex, where the central forming depth X coordinate (mm)
was the largest, but the forming depth of the +X side was smaller
than that in the previous two experiments. This is attributed to the (a)
movement of the material at the center of the blank, which drove
the material on both sides to produce a large deformation at the rst 1.0
pass discharge in the midst position B. Thus, a large enough electro-
magnetic force could not be produced in the subsequent discharge 0.8
pass at the two side discharge positions A and C, where even a min-
imal large voltage was adopted. Therefore, if the discharge path of
0.6
DRMS

MSS was adopted, the two side positions need to adopt very large
discharge voltages, which may induce a large forming depth.
0.4
In conclusion, with increased forming depth, improved unifor-
mity panels were obtained using the SMS loading path. The panels
obtained using the SSM loading path had a large forming depth but 0.2

the uctuation of the forming depth was large, thus the forming
uniformity was poor. The panels obtained using the MSS loading 0.0
path had a small forming depth, and the forming uniformity was 40 56 70

in between those of the previous two experiments. Taking into Position distance (mm)
account the forming effect and energy efciency of the different
loading paths, the SMS loading path was determined to be the most (b)
reasonable.
Fig. 13. Forming depth and shape deviation to the die of the panels with two-
position and two-pass discharging with different position distance.
3.4. Effect of the distance between positions

To study the effect of the distance between two adjacent dis-
charge positions, three EMIF experiments with two discharge
positions and two discharge passes were performed in this sec-
tion. In these experiments, a moderate capacitance of 160 F was
adopted and a blank panel with a rib height of 3 mm, rib width of
3 mm, and web thickness of 3 mm was used. Three position dis-
tances of 40 mm, 56 mm and 70 mm were adopted and the other
experimental conditions are shown in Table 4. The second dis-
charge position still used a larger voltage than the rst discharge
position for improving the uniformity of the parts.
The forming depth, the shape deviation to the die and the DRMS
along the X center path of the panels formed under single dis-
charge at each of two positions with different distances are shown
in Fig. 13(a) and (b). It can be seen from the gure that the forming
depth of the rst position of the three panels was smaller than that
of the second position since the discharge voltage of the rst pass
was small. With the decreasing the position distance, the form-
ing depth of the second discharge position decreased. The decrease
in the position distance indicates that the deformation at the rst
position had an increasing inuence on the second pass, since the
distance between two adjacent positions is closer, and the over-
lap ratio of the two discharge regions is relatively high. Thus, the
material near the second discharge position also experienced a
large downward movement. This occurrence would lead to the real
gap between the workpiece within the second position and the
coil become slightly larger than its initial value when discharged
at the second discharge position, weakening the electromagnetic
force on the second pass. It also lead to the forming uniformity
be improved with the position distance decreasing since the volt-
age of the second pass was larger, as shown in Fig. 13(b), when
the distance between the adjacent positions was 40 mm, the dif-
ference of the forming depth of the two passes was minimal, i.e.,
the value of DRMS is minimum, but the overall forming depth of
the panel was smaller than that of the panels with a large posi-
tion distance. Therefore, considering the forming effect, the energy
utilization efciency and the difculty in controlling the process
parameters, it is appropriate to use a large position distance. To
improve the forming uniformity in this group of experiments, the

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Table 4
Experimental conditions of EMIF with two discharge positions at different distances.

Position distances (mm) X coordinate of 1st position (mm) Voltage at 1st position (kV) X coordinate of 2nd position (mm) Voltage at 2nd position (kV)

70 35 7 35 9.9
56 28 7 28 9.9
40 20 7 20 9.9

25

Shape deviation to die (mm)

12 20
H-S=50mm
20
Forming depth (mm)

H-S=20mm
9 15

Forming depth (mm)

15
10
6
10
5
3 Flat panel(7+7kV)
5
D-S=50mm Flat panel(5+7kV)
D-S=20mm 0 Stiffened panel(5+7kV)
0 0
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60
X coordinate (mm)
Y coordinate (mm)

(a) Fig. 15. Forming depth of panels with two-position discharging with different panel
structure.
1.0

distance (about 50 mm) in a certain range is preferred for the EMIF

0.8 process of the panels.

3.5. Effect of the panel structure

0.6
DRMS

0.4
0.2
0.0
20
Position distance (mm)
(b)
Fig. 14. Forming depth and shape deviation to the die of panels with three-position
and three-pass discharging with different position distance.
discharge voltage at the rst discharge position should be appropri-
ately increased or a two-pass discharge at the rst position should
be applied.
According to the analysis in Section 3.3, the SMS loading path is
more suitable for the EMIF of the panel. Thus, two EMIF experiments
of the panels with three discharge positions and three passes using
the SMS loading path was designed (Table 5) to compare the effects
of the discharge positions. The moderate capacitance of 160 F and
the blank panel with a rib height of 3 mm, rib width of 3 mm, and
web thickness of 3 mm were used in these experiments.
The forming depth and the forming uniformity along the X cen-
ter path of the panels formed under single discharging at each of
three positions with different distances are shown in Fig. 14(a) and
(b). From the gure, it can be seen that the results under three
discharge positions were similar to those under two discharge posi-
tions, where the forming depth of the panels obtained under a large
position distance was larger and the forming uniformity was supe-
rior to that at a small position distance. Therefore, a large position
The effect of the panel structure was also studied in these paper
to compare the inuence of the forming results of ribs. Three
EMIF experiments with two discharge positions and two discharge
passes were performed in this section. In these experiments, the
capacitance was 320 F and blank panels with rib height and width
of 4 2 mm and without ribs were used, and the web thickness of
panels was 2 mm. The voltage at rst position was 5 kV or 7 kV, and
that at the second discharge position is 7 kV.
50
The forming depth of panels with two discharge positions are
as shown in Fig. 15. It can be seen that the forming depth of at
panels are larger than that of stiffened panel, and the difference
between the maximum of value is 3 mm. According to analysis of
the bending strength about T-shaped workpiece, stiffened panel is
difcult to achieve large forming depth compare to the at panel,
which is consistent with the experimental result. But wrinkling and
uneven forming are easy to occur in the forming process of the at
panel, as we can see in Fig. 16. From Fig. 15, at panel with which
discharge voltage is 7 + 7 kV, achieves uneven shape, and there are
local uplift in the llet region, it is because that the discharge energy
is large, and the workpiece produce a collision with the bottom of
the die and then rebound. So the overall forming depth is smaller
than that of panel with discharge voltage 5 + 7 kV.
This group of experiments prove that the EMIF can be applied
to the production of stiffener panels, and has the advantage of no
direct mechanical contact, which can protect the ribs. But it is need
to control appropriate discharge parameters to achieve the ideal
forming depth and shape.
4. Conclusions and prospects
The effects of the capacitance, discharge pass on the same posi-
tion, loading path, position distance and panel structure on the
EMIF of curvature panels with ribs were obtained in this study.
The results showed that under the condition of constant discharge

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Table 5
Experimental conditions of EMIF with three discharge positions under different distances.
Position distance X coordinate of 1st Voltage at 1st X coordinate of 2nd
(mm) position (mm) position (kV) position (mm)
50 50 7 0
20 20 7 0
Fig. 16. Experimental results of workpieces with different structure: (a) at panel(5 + 7 kV); (b) at panel(7 + 7 kV); (c) stiffened panel.
energy, an increase of the capacitance could improve the forming
depth of the panels, while the larger the capacitance, the smaller the
increase amount of the forming depth. In the xed discharge posi-
tion, two consecutive discharges of a small voltage followed by a
large voltage could improve the forming depth and the shape devi-
ation to the die. Adopting a large position distance was benecial
to improving the forming depth of the panels. The side-midst-side
loading path combined with a large discharge voltage on the second
and third discharge positions could effectively improve the form-
ing depth and the shape deviation to die of panels. The forming
depth of the stiffened panel was smaller than that of at panels on
the same discharge condition, but the at panel was more prone to
produce wrinkling defect.
The experimental results proved that it is feasible to form pan-
els through EMIF. However, this technique needs to be paired
with a reasonable loading path, capacitance, discharge voltage and
position distance, and it also needs to be supplemented with the
consecutive discharge method in the xed discharge position with
a small voltage followed by a large voltage.
In addition, because of the coupled effects of the complex shapes
of panels, high requirements for shapes and sizes, high deformation
rate of EMF, inhomogeneous deformation features as a result of
non-uniform electromagnetic force distribution, and complicated
process of EMIF, defects, such as fractures and wrinkles as well
as poor t to the die, are easily encountered during the process.
Thus, more detailed and profound research needs to be performed
to improve panel precision in EMIF through numerical simulation
and experiments.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Science Fund
for Outstanding Young Scholars of China (51625505) and the
National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant no.
2011CB012804).
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Please cite this article in press as: Guo K, et al. Electromagnetic incremental forming of integral panel under different discharge
conditions. J Manuf Process (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2017.01.010