Affiliation:
1. Jadavpur University, India
2. The Manufacturing Technology Centre, UK
Abstract
The laser bending process, also called the laser forming process, consists of irradiating the surface of a sheet or a plate by means of a moving laser beam with a predefined scanning strategy to generate the desired shape through thermally induced residual stress. This chapter presents the mechanisms of a laser bending process and the technological aspects concerning laser v-bending of rectangular AISI 304 plates for full plates and plates with a central cutout at its middle to highlight the process fundamentals and how processing affects the final bending angle of the workpieces. Laser bending involving plates with a cutout will have numerous applications for car bodies, such as front and rear panels where bending is required to be performed on panels with cutout geometries. To investigate the effects of shape and size of the cutout on temperature distribution, stress distribution, and final bending angle, different shapes such as circular, ellipse, rectangular, and square, as well as different dimensions of cutouts have been chosen.