Numerical simulation of electric hot incremental sheet forming of 1050 aluminum with and without preheating

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) consists of deforming the sheet, through a spherical punch, punctually and progressively until it reaches the desired geometry. Compared to the conventional process, the ISF can achieve much higher levels of formability. But the stresses and residual strains are often pushed to the limit on the path, producing a piece with brittle behavior, which is not desirable for applications in engineering. To work around this inconvenience, one solution would be to perform the conformation at high temperatures, a process known in engineering as hot forming. This study aims to evaluate the behavior of the state of stresses and strains in the hot incremental sheet forming of 1050 aluminum alloy, with and without pre-heating, using the finite element method. This behavior has been studied by numerical simulation, using the software RADIOSS, which has a suitable formulation for inserting the effects of temperature and strain rate in the material. The results show a decline in the forces for electric hot incremental sheet forming preheated (EHISFP) compared to the electric hot incremental sheet forming (EHISF). Moreover, for these same cases, there was a gain in relation to the geometric precision on average more than 4%.