Basic Analysis of the Incremental Profile Forming Process

Increasing demands in profile manufacturing leads to a constant increase of the geometric complexity of the profile. Nowadays, lightweight design and load adaption are of huge importance and a need for new profile manufacturing technologies exists. In order to cope with this development, a new tube profile forming method was invented, the incremental profile forming (IPF). IPF allows the flexible manufacturing of profiles with varying cross section geometries along the longitudinal profile axis and offers therefore a high potential for the manufacturing of lightweight design parts. Due to the high degree of innovation, research work regarding the process fundamentals as well as the process limits is necessary. For this reason, the results of the first basic experimental and numerical investigations are presented. While in the experiments, the potential of the process is shown in feasibility studies, first analyses of the forming process, and the influence of different process parameters on the process were carried out in numerical investigations. In particular, it turned out that the tool infeed and tube dimensions have significant influence on the forming force, whereas the tool radius has a minor influence.