Int J Adv Manuf Technol
DOI 10.1007/s00170-015-8030-1
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Numerical simulation and experimental study on cyclic
multi-point incremental forming process
Yuanxin Luo 1,2 & Wanmian Yang 2 & Zhifang Liu 3 & Yongqin Wang 1,2 & Ruxu Du 4
Received: 18 June 2015 / Accepted: 25 October 2015
# Springer-Verlag London 2015
Abstract Cyclic multi-point incremental forming (CMPIF) is
a new flexible forming process derived from multi-point
forming (MPF) and single-point incremental forming (SPIF)
methods. In MPF process, the pins are positioned to special
locations and fixed together as the discrete upper/lower die with
cooperation of a hydraulic/mechanical press to form a part in
several seconds. Similar to MPF process, the proposed CMPIF
process is also with discretized dies consisted of a matrix of
pins. However, its pins are cyclically controlled to move a small
step until all pins approximated gradually to the final shape of
the part. Therefore, the forming force of CMPIF process is
relative smaller than that of MPF process as well as the energy
consumption. In this paper, the CMPIF process was simulated
by using a mild steel Q235B plate in MSC.Marc®. An exper-
imental setup to perform the CMPIF process was designed and
* Yuanxin Luo
yxluo@cqu.edu.cn
Wanmian Yang
wanmyang@cqu.edu.cn
Zhifang Liu
liuzhifang@cqut.edu.cn
Yongqin Wang
wyq@cqu.edu.cn
Ruxu Du
rdu@mae.cuhk.edu.hk
1
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, Chongqing
University, Chongqing 400030, China
2
College of Mechanical Engineering, Chongqing University,
Chongqing 400030, China
3
College of Mechanical Engineering, Chongqing University of
Technology, Chongqing 400050, China
4
Department of Mechanical and Automation, The Chinese University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China
realized. The pins were driven by threaded rods with spherical
hinge at the head to eliminate local dimples. The pins were
driven manually to move forward to form a flat plate into the
desired final shape. The final shape of workpiece was scanned
by a 3D laser scanning system and reconstructed to a 3D sur-
face. The experimental results were compared to that of numer-
ical simulation. It could be seen that the doubly curved plate
can be formed effectively by the CMPIF method.
Keyword Multi-point cyclic incremental forming (CMPIF) .
Doubly curved surface . Ship building . Thick plate
1 Introduction
A ship hull features spatial surfaces to improve its flow char-
acteristics around the ship to meet performance requirements
of the speed, appearance, and fuel consumption. In general, it
is welded by a number of doubly curved plates. These plates
are characteristics of irregularity, varied curvature distribu-
tions, and relative small deformations compared with their
size. The precision of such shaped plate and its forming meth-
od are critical in the performance and efficiency of the ship
building process. However, the ship building is not a mass
production process, and therefore it is necessary to develop a
flexible thick plate forming process to replace traditional
forming methods, e.g., line heating and hammering.
To develop the flexible sheet metal forming process, many
researchers took efforts on the development of new forming
method, such as single-point incremental forming (SPIF)
method, flexible 3D stretch bending (FSB), flexibly
reconfigurable roll forming (FRRF), and multi-point forming
method (MPF). For instance, a simple hemispherical ended
tool moves along a predefined tool path on the peripherally
clamped sheet surface to generate accumulative effect of local
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 proposed a new tool path generation strategy to achieve a

1th group
smoother component. Luo et al. [4, 5] developed a new SPIF
64 17 18 19 20 21 22 45 system to form a sheet metal into final shape by a series of
small incremental punches, as well as theoretical study based
2th group
63 36 5 6 7 8 23
on minimum energy principle. In recent years, the FSB process
46
was used extensively in the aerospace industry to replace the
3th group traditional fixed shape-stretching for forming aircraft outer skin
62 35 16 1 2 9 24 47
parts by a matrix of punch elements. Liang et al. [6] introduced
34 4th group the FSB technology for aluminum profile and seeks to find out
61 15 4 3 10 25 48
the relationship between the springback and the compensation
60 33 14 13 12 11 26 49 parameters for the FSB process. Cai et al. [7] and Wang et al.
[8] conducted dynamic explicit finite element analysis to sim-
59 32 31 30 29 28 27 50
ulate the stretching process. This forming method is helpful to
form the sheet metal without transition zone so that the material
58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 utilization can be improved and manufacturing costs can be
saved. As above mentioned, the SPIF and FSB processes are
Cyclic paths consisted of square loops
only available for thin sheet metal forming.
FRRF is a novel forming process for manufacturing 3D
Fig. 1 The forming path of left side pins in a typical step of CMPIF
process
surface parts by employing a pair of forming rolls as a forming
tool. The sheet metal was rolled transversely and longitudinal-
ly in the no-uniform distribution roller gap simultaneously.
deformations leading a flat plate to the desired final geometry Yoon et al. [9] formed multi-curved shapes such as convex,
in the SPIF process. Thibaud et al. [1] focused on the definition saddle, and twist-type by the numerical simulations to dem-
of a numerical toolbox to simulate SPIF process at the scales of onstrate the feasibility of this forming method. Wang et al.
1 mm. They proposed the numerical results in terms of global [10–12] investigated FRRF by finite element method (FEM)
geometry, thickness evolution, and forming forces tested by an and experimental method. The agreement between simulation
equivalent experimental test. Yamashita and co-workers [2] and experimental results proved that FRRF was a feasible and
used dynamic explicit finite element code to simulate the ap- effective way of forming three-dimensional surface parts. But,
plicability of incremental forming of sheet metal and the effect it was suitable for producing 3D surface parts including the
of several types of tool paths on the deformation behavior. wide sheet metal with relatively small transversal curvature
They found that it was better for the tool to travel simulta- radius. Multi-point forming (MPF) is another flexible
neously in the horizontal and vertical directions to obtain more manufacturing technique for three-dimensional sheet metal
uniform thickness distribution in the product. Malhotra et al. forming. Sun et al. [13] studied the influence of the rigid and
[3] developed analytical formulations to predict rigid body flexible blank-holder on the thicknesses, wrinkle, and forming
motion during each intermediate pass to solve geometric inac- limit. However, the plates are too thick for holding in the thick
curacy issue of the formed component with SPIF. They also plate forming process in the ship skull. Zhang et al. [14, 15]

Fig. 2 Sequence chart of pins Velocity (mm/s)

movement in the first group

t (s)

t (s)

t (s)

t (s)

(b) Sequence chart used to control

(a) First group pins and plate movement of pins
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
A
B forming process and compensated it to the stroke. Zhang et al.
C [20] further proposed a theoretical analysis to calculate the
D
Plate
(a) Last forming state
Moving pin in the current step
Clearance
(b) Current forming state
Fig. 3 Illustration of feeding movement of the pins
found that the shape of the upper die affected the workpiece
deformation by FEM. They studied the effect of the size of
punch element and the shape of MPSD on the process shape
accuracy of formed parts. Therefore, Liu [16] and Tan [17] put
cushions between the metal and die to avoid dimples caused
by the discrete punch and smooth the formed metal surface.
They also modified MPSF parameters to optimize MPSF
manufacture processes. Li et al. [18] described the MPF pro-
cess on the basis of updated Lagrangian formulation and con-
tact FEM. They proposed an effective algorithm to solve the
frictional contact constitutive equations and proved it with
experimental data. To control accurate of the desired shape,
springback is one of the key problems to be considered be-
cause it is strongly associated with mechanical bending.
Fig. 4 Material properties tests
MTS Landmark 370.10
experimental device
Hwang et al. [19] simulated the springback of a thick metal
springback and proved that it was an effective method to con-
trol the errors caused by springback.
The above mentioned processes are immature for increas-
ing needs of the large size thick plate forming for the ship
building industry. In this paper, a new forming method, so-
called cyclic multi-point incremental forming process
(CMPIF), is proposed with the combination of the advantages
of SPIF and MPF. The rest of the paper is organized as fol-
lows. Section 2 presents the proposed CMPIF process includ-
ing its working principle and numerical simulations. Section 3
introduces the experimental setup and Sect. 4 gives some dis-
cussions. Finally, Sect. 5 contains the conclusions.
2 MPIF process
2.1 Working principle
Similar to MPF process, the left side and right side dies are
discretized by number of pins in the proposed CMPIF process.
The difference is that all left pins are classified to four groups
according to their position shown in Fig. 1. The innermost and
outermost left pins are set as the first and the fourth groups,
respectively. The yellow pins are defined as the second group
while the green pins are defined as the third group. The se-
quence chart of pins in the first group is shown in Fig. 2. Pin 1
starts to move forward while the other pins are fixed. Then, the
movement of the pins in the second group begins from pin 5 to
pin 16, followed by the pins in the group 3 and group 4. The
sequence charts of pins in other groups are similar to that of
the first group. The ith forming step is completed until all of
the pins are moved to defined positions.
Collet Axial extensometer Strain gauge
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

600 Table 1 Coefficients in Eq. (2)

Elastic modulus strain hardening strain rate strength coefficient

500
Engineering Stress (MPa)

(GPa) exponent exponent (MPa)

400 204 0.1422 −0.0289 513

300
Strain rate=2.84×10-3 /s plastic constitutive behavior with isotropic hardening is used
200 Strain rate=5.68×10-3 /s to describe its mechanical behavior. The MTS Landmark
Strain rate=8.52×10-3 /s 370.10 test system shown in Fig. 4 is capable of bending,
100 Strain rate=11.4×10-3 /s tensile, and compressive experiments by the displacement or
force control mode. The length and diameter of the specimen
0 are 100 and 10 mm, respectively. It is clamped by the speci-
0 0.05 0.1 0.15
men holder on the both sides. The stress and strain are record-
Engineering strain ed by using displacement control mode in tension tests. The
Fig. 5 Engineering stress–strain curve tensile experiments are conducted at different strain rates as to
simulate the different forming speeds. The engineering stress
The most obvious characteristic of the proposed method is and strain are calculated by
to move the pin one by one sequentially. The contact forces 8
between the plate and pins A, B, and D can be released in the >
> F
<σ ¼
current forming step if the pin C moves forward, as shown in A
ð1Þ
Fig. 3. Pins A, B, and D can be moved forwards under small >
> ΔL
:ε ¼
loads or even without loads. Therefore, the CMPIF process is L0
capable of forming the desired shape plate with smaller
where σ and ε are the engineering stress and strain, respec-
forming force compared to the MPF process. Besides, the
tively, F and ΔL are the tension force and elongation of the
plate is clamped by the left pins and right pins and without
specimen, and L0 is the initial length of the specimen.
any unconstrained region during the whole forming process.
The engineering stress–strain curves obtained from the ex-
Consequently, the proposed forming method is flexible to re-
periment tests and its true stress–strain curves are shown in
duce the wrinkle and bulking phenomenon.
Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. To analyze the forming process by
using commercial FEM software, the power law stress–strain
2.2 Numerical simulations model is used, that is

2.2.1 Material properties property investigation σtrue ¼ Eεtrue σtrue < 290M Pa
m ð2Þ
σtrue ¼ Kεtrue n εtrue σtrue ≥ 290M Pa


One of most common used mild steel plate for ship building,
where is the true stress, εtrue is the true strain, εtrue is the true


Q235B, is studied in this research. The isotropic and elasto-

strain rate, E is the elastic modulus, n is the strain hardening
exponent, m is the strain rate sensitive exponent, and K is the
600
strength coefficient.
The coefficients in Eq. (2) listed in Table 1 are determined
500
by the nonlinear least squares fitting method from the test
results given in Fig. 6.
True Stress (MPa)

400

300 2.2.2 FEM model

-3
Strain rate=2.84×10 /s
200 Strain rate=5.68×10-3/s The numerical simulation of the CMPSF process is per-
formed quasi-statically with nonlinear commercial finite
Strain rate=8.52×10-3/s
element analysis software, MSC.Marc®. The initial
100 Strain rate=11.4×10 -3/s
workpiece is a plate with the size of 5mm×600mm×
600mm (thickness ×width× length) shown in Fig. 7. It
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 is divided into 14400 3D quadrilateral shell elements
True strain with 31 layers to get as much information as possible
Fig. 6 True stress–strain curve i n t h e t h i c kn e s s d i r ec t i on . T h e e l a s t i c– p l a s t i c
Int J Adv Manuf Technol

Fig. 7 FEM model A

B I
2
C 3
Soft springs

(a) Expected shape (b) Right pins distribution (c) FEM model

constitutive behavior with isotropic hardening is as- 3 Experiment

sumed to workpiece. Three springs are created near
each corner of the plate, and one ends of the springs
are connected the corner points of the plate while the
other ends are fixed to restrict the rigid body displace-
ments of the plate. All the left pins are defined as one
rigid body without any movement. The right 64 pins are
defined as 64 rigid bodies with their own specific
movement so that the computational time can be saved
and the forming process could be realized. The numer-
ical simulation need to perform in about 10 h on a Dell
workstation (CPU: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5507, 4M
Cache, 2.26 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI; memory:
12 GB).
3.1 Experimental setup
Experimental setup designed to perform the CMPIF process is
realized to validate the numerical simulation, as shown in
Fig. 8. It is symmetry about XY and YZ planes structurally.
Each pin is assembled by a threaded rod and squeeze head.
The spherical hinge constituted by threaded rods and doubly
curved shape heads is beneficial to improve the contact rela-
tionship between the surfaces of the sheet metal and robs. The
horizontal structural is convenient to drive pins forward man-
ually. The pre-stressed frame is assembled by the left beam,
right beam, tension rod, and pre-load nut schematically.

Fig. 8 The experimental setup Spherical hinge

Z Y

Prestressed Nut

Right beam

Pins

Squeeze head

Left beam
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

Fig. 11 The forming part for

laser scanning

Plate after painting for scanning purpose

Threaded rods (8 rows×8 columns) are installed in the left and
right beams. The tails of rods are machined to hexagonal
shape so that they could be driven by external force to move
axially. The heads of rods are designed as a spherical shape
with radius of 100 mm. All rods are self-locked after they
moved to preset positions axially by external forces so that it
is flexible to adjust the expected geometry of sheet metal. A
socket head wrench is used manually to rotate the tails of robs
one by one cyclically.
3.2 Experiment procedure
The experiment procedure is illustrated in Fig. 11. The plate is
fixed vertically at first. Then, the right discrete pins move to
their specified position according to the expected shape so that
a continuous saddle surface can be produced (Fig. 9a). Then,
the left pins move forward and contact to surface of the plate;
the forming process begins, as shown in Fig. 9b. The left pins
move individually in the clockwise direction from inner to
outer groups. For example, the first pin begins to move for-
ward while all the other pins are fixed. Then, the second pin
moves forward while all the other pins are also fixed, as
shown in Fig. 9c. The second-group pins begin to move indi-
vidually until the first-group pins complete their movement, as
shown in Fig. 9d. The next cycle starts until the fourth group
pins move to their specified position (Fig. 9e). This cyclic
forming process (the total cycle number is N) does not stop
until the discrete surface approaches the expected shape, as

Sheet

(a) Preset state (b) Pins begin to move forward (c) Completed state of the first group
pins in the ith circulation

Begin the i+1th circulation if i≠N

i=N

(e) Completed state of the third (d) Completed state of the second
(f) Final state group pins in the ith circulation group pins in the ith circulation
Fig. 9 Schematic illustration of CMPIF process
Int J Adv Manuf Technol

(a) 0% (b) 20%

(b) completed state of the first group
(a) initial state
pins in the ith circulation

(c) 40% (d) 60%

C
B
(c) completed state of the second group (d) completed state of the third group
pins in the ith circulation pins in the ith circulation

(e) 80% (f) 100%

Fig. 13 Displacement history of the forming process

plate with thickness of 5 mm. It is placed between the left side

(e) completed state of the fourth group
(f) final state
pins in the ith circulation
Fig. 10 Experimental procedure
shown in Fig. 9f. Each left pin moves back to their initial
position and the forming forces are released. The final part is
taken out of the experimental setup.
To vilify the numerical results, it is necessary to conduct
some experiments by using the experimental setup. A CMPIF
procedure is developed to form a saddle shape from a steel
pins and the right pins vertically. The pin head is moved for-
ward to contact and fix the plate by rotating screw rods. Then,
the forming process starts by driving pins cyclically. The ini-
tial state of the pins set for the experimental study is shown in
Fig. 10a. The contact relationship between the plate and each
group pins is built for the first time, as shown in Fig. 10b–e.
This process is so-called a forming step, and it continues to be
executed until the plate is formed to the state in Fig. 10f. It is
found that the doubly curved shape heads change their direc-
tion frequently to adjust the contact relationship by the spher-
ical hinges during the experimental process.

Fig. 12 Scanning process of the

part 3D scanner

Scanned results

Plate to be scanned
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

-20

Displacement (mm)
-40

-60
Scanned points to surface
0 Forming state by FEM (25%)
-10 -80 Forming state by FEM (50%)
Forming state by FEM (75%)
-20
-100 Forming state by FEM (100%)
Displacement (mm)

0
-30 Forming state by experiment (100%)
-20
-40
-120
-40 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
-60
-80 -50 Y Coordinate (mm)
300
200 300
-60 Fig. 16 B1B2 section curves of the final part shown in Fig. 14b
100 200
100
0
0 -70
-100
-100 backward one by one from the first group to the fourth group
-200 -200 -80
-300 -300
cyclically. The released state plate is shown in Fig. 11. The
whole experimental procedure is performed manually in 2 h.
(a) The final shape scanned from experimental part
The plate is painted to white color for the scanning purpose.
Measured sections The plate is put on the ground and its surface is scanned by a
3D laser scanning system shown in Fig. 12. This optical meth-
D2 B2
od provides more than 1,960,000 measured points.
C2 A2

z
x 4 Discussion
y
D1
B1 C1 The displacement evolution of the forming process of the plate
A1 is recorded and presented in Fig. 13. It is found that the dis-
placement distributions are similar but with different values
for typical forming stages. The surface is smooth at the begin-
ning because of the small pin forces acting on the workpiece.
(b) Final shape predicted by FEM Simulation The winkle regions A, B, and C appear during the later
Fig. 14 Comparison between numerical method and experimental result forming process due to inconsistent movement of pins, as
shown in Fig. 13f.
The unloading process is considered as the opposite oper- The scanned point cloud can be reconstructed to a surface
ation of the forming process. It means that the pins move shown in Fig. 14a. It is found that the saddle surface is

0 0

-20 -20
Displacement (mm)
Displacement (mm)

-40 -40

-60 -60

Forming state by FEM (25%) Forming state by FEM (25%)

-80 -80 Forming state by FEM (50%)
Forming state by FEM (50%)
Forming state by FEM (75%) Forming state by FEM (75%)
-100 Forming state by FEM (100%) -100 Forming state by FEM (100%)
Forming state by experiment (100%) Forming state by experiment (100%)
-120 -120
-300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
Y Coordinate (mm) X Coordinate (mm)
Fig. 15 A1A2 section curves of the final part shown in Fig. 14b Fig. 17 C1C2 section curves of the final part shown in Fig. 14b
Int J Adv Manuf Technol

0 750

M a x im u m to ta l fo r m in g fo r c e ( k N )
-20
725
Displacement (mm)

-40
700
-60

-80 Forming state by FEM (25%) 675

Forming state by FEM (50%)
Forming state by FEM (75%)
-100 Forming state by FEM (100%)
Forming state by experiment (100%)
-120
-300 -200 -100 0 100 200
X Coordinate (mm)
Fig. 18 D1D2 section curves of the final part shown in Fig. 14b
successfully formed. The displacement of sections can be ex-
tracted from the simulation result and scanned data. For ex-
ample, the displacement history of longitudinal section A1A 2
and B1B 2 in Fig. 14b is shown in Figs. 15 and 16, respectively.
It can be seen that the symmetrical displacement curves appear
at the beginning of the forming process. The reason is that
most areas of plate are still in the elastic state which does
not depend on the forming path. The asymmetry become ob-
vious in the following forming process due to the plastic de-
formation related to the forming path. The reasons can also be
used to explain the displacement history of transversal section
C1C 2 and D1D 2 shown in Figs. 17 and 18, respectively. The
displacement difference at the final forming state between the
simulation result and experiment data is significant. The max-
imum error is about 10 mm. This is probably because of the
low precise of manually operation as well as the springback of
the plate.
To investigate the effect of friction on the numerical results,
the frictions at the interfaces between squeeze heads of pins
and sheet metal are assumed to follow Coulomb’s model [7],
650
0.1 0.125 0.15 0.175 0.2
Friction coefficient
300 Fig. 20 Relationship between maximum total force and friction
coefficient
and the friction coefficients are considered as 0.1, 0.125, 0.15,
0.175, and 0.2, respectively. Figure 19 shows the influence of
the friction coefficients on the total forming forces history. It
seems that the forming force history is not sensitive to the
friction coefficients. It is found that the maximum forming
forces are linearly associated with friction coefficients with a
small gradient, as shown in Fig. 20. The influence of the
friction coefficients on the displacement of the plate can be
ignored shown in Fig. 21. The reason is that the plate is forced
to deform with the same pin movement. The nodes under pins
are pushed to the same place so that the displacement contours
are similar to each other which are independent on the friction
coefficient.
Since the friction coefficient is not so sensitive to the
forming process, one of the simulation results was taken to
analyze the forming forces of typical pins, as given in Fig. 22.
The peak points occurred when pins moved forward at the
beginning of the current moving step. Then, the forming
forces of pins fluctuated slightly. The reason is that the contact

900
Friction coefficient=0.1
800 Friction coefficient=0.125
T o ta l fo r m in g fo r c e ( k N )

Friction coefficient=0.15
700
Friction coefficient=0.175
600 Friction coefficient=0.2
(a) Friction coefficient=0.1 (b) Friction coefficient=0.125
500
400
300
200
100
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Incremental step (c) Friction coefficient=0.15 (d) Friction coefficient=0.175
Fig. 19 Total forming forces history with different friction coefficients Fig. 21 Final displacement with different friction coefficients
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

20 0

Pin 2 -20
Pin 8
15
F o r m in g fo r c e ( k N )

Displacement (mm)
Pin 22 -40
Pin 44
-60
10
Forming step = 10 (B B )
1 2
-80
Forming step = 20 (B B )
1 2
5 -100 Forming step = 30 (B B )
1 2

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Incremental step
Fig. 22 Typical pin forces (the pin number is defined in Fig. 1, friction
coefficient=0.2)
stresses between pins and the plate is released when their
adjacent pins move forward.
To investigate the forming steps, the forming process
is simulated with three different forming steps by FEM.
It is found that 10 forming steps are not enough for the
CMIFP, and 20 forming steps are good to form the
plate. The main reason is that the final shape of the
part is not smooth for 10 forming steps, as shown from
Figs. 23, 24, 25, and 26. The final shape is much better
by increasing the forming step. It can be seen that the
longitudinal and transversal section curves are almost
the same for 20 forming steps and 30 forming steps.
It means that it is unnecessary to set too many steps
to form the plate so that the forming time can be saved.
For this case, more than 20 forming steps should be
good enough for forming the part.
-120
-300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
Y Coordinate (mm)
Fig. 24 B1B2 section curves of the final part by different forming steps
5 Conclusions
This paper presents a new forming process with combination
of the advantages of SPIF and MPF processes. Based on the
result presented above, it is believed that the proposed forming
method can be used for forming the thick plate into doubly
curved surface by using small pin forces, and therefore, it has
great potential for applications in the ship building industry.
Compared to the other forming methods, the following con-
clusions can be drawn:
(1) The typical characteristic of the proposed forming meth-
od is to move one pin forward each time while the other
pins stand still. Therefore, it can form the same plate with
smaller forming force and reduce bulking phenomenon
by pre-constraining the unstable region.
(2) The numerical simulation results are well matched to
those of experiments. A doubly curved part was

0 0

-20 -20
D is p la c e m e n t ( m m )

Displacement (mm)

-40 -40

-60 -60 Forming step = 10 (C C )

1 2

Forming step = 10 (A A ) Forming step = 20 (C C )

1 2 1 2
-80 -80 Forming step = 30 (C C )
Forming step = 20 (A A ) 1 2
1 2
Forming step = 30 (A A )
-100 1 2 -100

-120 -120
-300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
Y Coordinate (mm) X Coordinate (mm)
Fig. 23 A1A2 section curves of the final part by different forming steps Fig. 25 C1C2 section curves of the final part by different forming steps
Int J Adv Manuf Technol

0 3. Yamashita M, Gotoh M, Atsumi S (2008) Numerical simulation of

incremental forming of sheet metal. J Mater Process Technol 199:
163–172
-20
4. Luo Y, He K, Du R (2010) A new sheet metal forming system based
on the incremental punching, part 1: modeling and simulation. Int J
Displacement (mm)

-40 Adv Manuf Technol 51:481–491

-60
Forming step = 10 (D D )
1 2
-80 Forming step = 20 (D D )
1 2
Forming step = 30 (D D )
-100 1 2
-120
-300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300
X Coordinate (mm)
Fig. 26 D1D2 section curves of the final part by different forming steps
successfully formed from a thick plate by using a simple
experimental setup, although it takes a longer time to
form one part compared with the MPIF process. It means
that this forming method has potential to form larger and
thicker plate for shipbuilding.
(3) The springback and wrinkle of the plate should be further
studied for improving the precision of the final shape,
and a theoretical model for optimization of the process
parameters should be considered for the coming engi-
neering application of this forming method. Also, the
experiment setup is expected to be driven by servomotor
for improving the forming efficiency as well as accuracy
of the workpiece.
Acknowledgments This research is supported by “Taishan Scholar of
Leading Talent in Ocean Engineering - A Special Project of Numerical
Control Ship Building Machines” and the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities (Grant No.CDJZR12110002).
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parametric toolbox for the simulation of single point incremental
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