J.W. Park

Numerical and Experimental Study on Plate Forming Process using Flexible Die

A flexible forming apparatus is composed a number of punches which have spherical pin tip shape instead of conventional solid die. The flexible forming tool consisted of punch array in a matrix form was proposed as an alternative forming method to substitute the conventional line heating method which use heat source to induce residual stress along specified heating lines. In this study, application of the flexible forming process to the small scale curved plate forming was conducted. Numerical simulations for both solid and flexible die forming process were carried out to compare the shape of the products between flexible and conventional die forming process. In addition, spring-back analysis was conducted to figure out the feasibility of the flexible forming process comparing with the die forming process in view of final configuration of the specimens. Moreover, experiment was also carried out to confirm the formability of the process. Consequently, it was confirmed that the flexible die forming method has capability and feasibility to manufacture the curved plates for shipbuilding.

Development of Stretch Forming Apparatus using Flexible Die

A stretch forming method has been widely used in sheet metal forming process. Especially, this process has been adopted in aircraft and high-speed train industries for skin structure forming having a variety of curvature. Until now, solid dies, which are designed with respect to the specific shapes and manufactured as a single piece, have been usually applied to stretch forming process. Therefore, a great number of solid dies has to be developed according to the shapes of the curved skin structure. Accordingly, a flexible die is proposed in this study. It replaces the conventional solid dies with a set of height adjustable punch array. A usefulness of the flexible die is verified through a formability comparison with the solid die using finite element method considering an elastic recovery and the stretch forming apparatus with the flexible die is developed.

Manufacture of Architectural Skin-structure with a Double Curved Surface Using Flexible Stretch Forming

Flexible stretch forming is an appropriate process for manufacturing of components for aerospace, shipbuilding and architecture structures. Flexible stretch forming has several advantages including that it could be applied to form various shapes such as ones with double curved surfaces. In this study, a systematic numerical simulation was conducted for forming double curved surfaces using flexible stretch forming. The desired surface had a saddle type configuration. It had two radii one of 2500mm and the other of 2000mm along its length and width. In the simulation, the decrease of elastic recovery due to the stretching was confirmed. Experiments were also conducted to confirm the viability of the process. By comparing the simulation to the experiment results, the suitability of flexible stretch forming for double curved surfaces was verified. From the results, the maximum error from desired surface was confirmed at about 1.3mm at the edge of the surface. Hence, it is confirmed that flexible stretch forming has the capability and feasibility to manufacture curved surfaces for architectural skin-structures of buildings.

Experimental Study on Non-Axisymmetric Rectangular Cup using Multi-Stage Deep Drawing Process

For multi-stage deep drawing process including ironing operation and biaxial forming in this study, tool developments are achieved, and the developed tool sets are applied to experimental investigations. In process and tool designs, a contact condition between intermediate blank and lower die is considered as the sequential one. In this study, the material used is cold-rolled thin sheet (SPCE) with the initial thickness of 0.4mm. From the experimental approaches, several failures such as tearing, localized thickening and thinning, are observed. To solve these failures, the contact surface on the lower die is modified. As the experimental results by applying the modified lower die, it is investigated that the failures are not occurred, and the excessive deformation behavior due to the thinning and thickening effects are decreased. Furthermore, the thickness distributions on the major axis and the minor axis of each intermediate blank are investigated to be already satisfied the target (ironing) thickness, respectively. By this systematic approach, it is confirmed that the experimental results show good agreements with the designed and required configuration of each deformed and final products.

Numerical Simulation for a Multi-Stage Deep Drawing of Anisotropic SUS409L Sheet into a Rectangular Cup

Recently, electric vehicles and hybrid cars are being promoted as alternatives to reduce automobile emissions. Generally, thin sheet materials such as aluminum alloy AA300X and cold-rolled steel sheet such as JIS-G-3141 are used for the container for the lithium-ion secondary batteries. In this study, a multi-stage deep drawing process is used to produce a rectangular cup from thin stainless steel sheet material, SUS409L, with an initial blank thickness of 0.4mm for the battery container application. Numerical simulations of the first through the fifth stages for the multi-stage deep drawing with thin SUS409L sheet were conducted using LS-Dyna3D Implicit/Explicit. Special consideration was given to the deformation characteristics due to the normal anisotropy of the sheet material. The numerical simulations were conducted with both isotropic properties and the anisotropic properties of the initial blank material. An unexpected forming failure, barreling in the bottom region of the deep drawn rectangular cup, was observed. This failure mode can be avoided by additional ironing thickness control during the process.

Comparative Study of Applicability of Aluminum, Magnesium and Copper Alloy Sheets using Flexibly-reconfigurable Roll Forming

A new sheet metal forming process, called flexibly reconfigurable roll forming (FRRF), is expected to resolve the economical limitation of the existing 3D curved sheet metal forming processes. The height-controllable guides and a couple of flexible rollers are utilized as the forming tool. Recently, as the 3D curved sheet metal is increasingly demanded in various fields, the application of FRRF to diverse materials is necessary. In addition, the formability comparison of several materials is needed. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the applicability of FRRF for different materials such as aluminum, magnesium, and copper alloys, and also the formability of these materials was compared using FRRF. The numerical simulation was conducted using ABAQUS, the commercial software, and the experiments were carried out using an FRRF apparatus to validate the simulation results. Finally, the applicability of FRRF for the chosen materials and the formability of these materials on FRRF process were confirmed by comparing the simulation and experimental results.

Numerical Study of Aircraft Winglet Mold Manufacturing using Flexible Forming

Flexible forming technology has advantages in sheet metal forming, because it can be implemented to produce various shaped molds using a single apparatus. Due to this advantage, it is possible to apply it to the manufacture of an aircraft winglet mold. Presently, most aircraft winglets are manufactured from composite materials. Therefore, the mold for the curing process is an essential element in the fabrication of such composite materials. Compared to conventional mold forming, flexible forming has some advantages such as reduced manufacturing cost and uniformity of mold thickness. If the thickness of the mold is consistent, then the heat transfer will occur uniformly during the curing process leading to improved formability of the composite material. In the current study, numerical simulations were performed to investigate the possibility of flexible forming for manufacturing of the winglet mold. In order to match the size of the actual product, the shape of objective surface was divided to fit the dimensions of the apparatus. The results from the numerical simulations are compared with the objective surface to verify the accuracy. In conclusion, the current study confirms the feasibility and the potential to manufacture winglet molds by flexible forming.

Performance Enhancement of Timing Acquisition and Detection in UWB-IR Matched Filter Receiver

This paper deals with the timing acquisition for ultra wideband (UWB) signals in dense multipath environment. To estimate the start of the frame with respect to the receivers clock, least square (LS) method has recently proposed. However, that method needs accurate channel length for precise timing. In our proposed algorithm, we estimate the effective channel length by estimating the root mean square (RMS) delay spread of noisy template (NT). The results show that our proposed method has better performance than conventional correlation methods due to the improved timing acquisition.