Research Projects

The project involves design development of a Vacuums cum Ultrasonic assisted warm Incremental Sheet Forming Process for Titanium Alloys. This involves the application of local ultrasonic vibrations under vacuum (~1000 atm) media for warm forming of titanium sheet materials (work pieces) under vacuum using single point incremental forming process which is generated by the layer wise forming as in additive manuf. steps. To develop such a system, we need to use the existing 'Robot-Assisted incremental Sheet Hydroforming Setup' with the PI by adding a Vacuum chamber in bottom and a heating source below the work within the vacuum chamber itself. The ball tool will be replaced by an US tool vibrator unit attached with the robot wrist. A controlling 3rd party software for path planning and to generate the layerwise profiles is used to generate the forming layer scan data as per the forming profile needed on the workpiece. This will also have analysis & simulation study of the process including CAD model devt. of the forming profile of the final shape and experiments. The application of a warm heating of the sheet is done in order of 250-500o C and a moving ultrasonic ball ended forming tool is to provide localized forming vibration & heating to the tool-sheet contact area, thus reduces the ductility of sheet locally. The motion of the tool is controlled by a Robot program which allows the tool to move in a step-wise manner to achieve the final shape incrementally. The tool head provided with an ultrasonic vibrations with suitable amplitude and freq. is to help multiply formability of the sheet metal. To develop such a hybrid system, the PI needs to add in the existing 'Robot-Assisted incremental Sheet Hydro forming Setup' a fiber warm carbide heating source and a robot controlling soft. along with a tool added with an Ultrasonic vibration Generation system, which are to be mounted on the ball ended tool head to provide vibrations to sheet while performing forming. This research proposal will also have expts., analysis & simulation studies on the combined process including initial CAD model devt. of the work-piece. Such setup will be used to perform incremental sheet forming on hard to deform Titanium & other alloys etc. The simulation of the Vacuum-assisted Incremental warm sheet forming using US Vibration will be done using ABAQUS simulation for studies on different process parameters (forming power, forming Temperature, Vacuum pressure, Amplitude of Vibration & frequency, feeding and speed etc.) for Ti6AL4V, an optimal forming strategy will be developed for better quality and surface finish, and sheet formability. Based on the forming strategy developed, several experiments will be conducted under different process parameters. The analysis of the results will be made based on various mech. and Metall. tests, FLD, ductility, spring back, SEM, XRD tests and thus, an analytical model may be developed for helping ind. for designing their optimal sol.