Luca Giorleo

Hot Stretch Forming of a Titanium Alloy Component for Aeronautic: Mechanical and Modeling

The development of Hot Stretch Forming (HSF) by the Cyril Bath Company was in response to airframe designers needing to use Titanium airframe components in new commercial aircraft. Many of the airframe component structures are designed to fit against the inside radius of the fuselage curvature. By combining traditional stretch forming technology with hot titanium forming techniques, the HSF guarantees a saving in material and machining time, which are two serious cost issues for today’s aircraft manufacturers. In addition, the process allows for consistent quality in a productively efficient manner, assuring the sustainable attainment of delivery and build schedules. The HSF is an innovative process on the cutting edge of the technologies, so focused research is needed in order to better understand this technology and develop new applications for this process. in this paper the HSF process is investigated: the machine and the different steps that characterized the process were described and the results of a preliminary experimental campaign was discussed focusing the attention on the metallurgical aspect. Moreover a modeling of the process was executed in order to study the stresses and strains undergone by the material among the deformation.

Speed Idle Roll Law Optimization in a Ring Rolling Process

Ring Rolling is a complex hot forming process where different rolls are involved in the production of seamless rings characterized by extreme dimensions (i.e. external diameter higher more than 1m). Because each roll can be independently controlled from the other ones different speed laws must be set; usually, in the industrial environment, a milling curve is introduced to monitor the shape of the workpiece during the deformation in order to ensure a correct ring production. In former works the authors focused their attention on the influence of different milling curves for an industrial case and the results underlined that a ring produced with a good quality and lower loads and energy could be obtained imposing a linearly descending trend to the Idle roll speed law. However different approaches could be used in order to evaluate the mentioned speed law.In this work the authors enhanced the knowledge about the optimization of the Idle roll speed law: different Idle roll speed laws were designed and simulated and the results were compared in order to identify the best speed law that guarantees a good quality ring with lower loads and energy required for manufacturing.

Milling Curves Influence in Ring Rolling Processes

Ring Rolling is a complex hot forming process used for the production of shaped rings, seamless and axis symmetrical workpieces. The main advantage of workpieces produced by ring rolling, compared to other technological processes, is given by the size and orientation of grains, especially on the worked surface which give to the final product excellent mechanical properties. In this process different rolls (Idle, Axial, Guide and Driver) are involved in generating the desired ring shape. Since each roll is characterized by a speed law that can be set independently by the speed law imposed to the other rolls, an optimization is more critical compared with other deformation processes. Usually, in industrial environment, a milling curve is introduced in order to correlate the Idle and Axial roll displacement, however it must be underlined that different milling curves lead to different loads and energy for ring realization. In this work an industrial case study was modeled by a numerical approach: different milling curves characterized by different Idle and Axial roll speed laws (linearly decreasing, constant, linearly increasing) were designed and simulated. The results were compared in order to identify the best milling curve that guarantees a good quality ring (higher diameter, lower fishtail) with lower loads and energy required for manufacturing.

Titanium Hot Stretch Forming: Experimental and Modeling Residual Stress Analysis

Titanium alloys, due to their high mechanical properties coupled with light weight and high corrosion resistance, are finding a widespread use in the aeronautic industry. The use of titanium in replacing the conventional alloys, such as aluminum alloys and steel, is reduced by both the high cost of the raw material (it costs anywhere from 3 to 10 times as much as steel or aluminium) and the machining costs (at least 10 times that to machine aluminium). For such a reason new technologies have been studied and developed. In particular many researchers are searching for technologies, such as the precision hot forming, that allows to obtain components with a low buy to fly ratio. Many of the airframe component structures are designed to fit against the inside radius of the fuselage curvature. By combining traditional stretch forming technology with hot titanium forming techniques, the HSF guarantees a saving in material and machining time, which are two serious cost issues for todays aircraft manufacturers. In addition, the process allows for consistent quality in a productively efficient manner, assuring the sustainable attainment of delivery and build schedules. In order to develop and improve the HSF process a modeling of the process itself was executed in order to study the stresses and strains undergone by the material among the deformation. The FEM model was validated through the residual stresses, and in particular the residual stresses provided by the model were compared with the ones experimentally measured using the hole drilling technique. Good agreement, in terms of stress range, was recorded both for the maximum and the minimum stress.

Idle and axial roll speed law trend effect in an industrial ring rolling process

In Ring Rolling process, to generate a seamless and axis symmetrical ring, two independent deformation processes simultaneously occur to reduce the starting ring cross section shape (width and height) in order to increase the diameter. How this shape changes during the whole deformation process greatly affects the produced ring quality and the loads and energy needed. The main problem is that the shape change is due to two deformation processes that occur in two different ring sections. The ring width reduction is realized in the cross section between the Idle and the Driver roll while the cross section deformed by the Axial rolls movement regulates the ring height. The main problem is that each roll speed law could be set independently from the others. In the industrial environment, a milling curve is introduced to correlate them to the ring section shape. In order to enhance the knowledge on how the Idle and Axial roll speed laws affect the Ring Rolling process, in this work an industrial case study was modeled by a numerical approach. Different Idle and Axial roll speed laws (linearly decreasing, constant, linearly increasing), were designed and simulated. The results were analyzed in order to understand how each speed law trend affects the produced ring quality (higher diameter, lower fishtail) and the process performance (lower loads and energy required for manufacturing).

Speed Roll Laws Influence in a Ring Rolling Process

Ring Rolling is a complex hot forming process used for the production of shaped rings, seamless and axis symmetrical workpieces. The main advantage of workpieces produced by ring rolling, compared to other technological processes, is given by the size and orientation of grains, especially on the worked surface which give to the final product excellent mechanical properties. In this process different rolls (Idle, Axial, Guide and Driver) are involved in generating the desired ring shape. Because each roll is characterized by a speed law that could be set independently by the speed law imposed to the other rolls an optimization is more critical compared with other deformation processes. Usually in industrial environment a milling curve is introduced in order to correlate the Idle and Axial roll displacement, however it must be underlined that different milling curves lead to different loads and energy for ring realization.In this work an industrial case study was modeled by a numerical approach: different milling curves characterized by different Idle and Axial roll speeds laws (constant, linear and quadratic) were designed and simulated. The results were compared in order to identify the best set of Idle and Axial roll speed laws that guarantee a good quality produced ring (lower fishtail) with lower manufacturing loads and energy.

Counter Laser Treatment for Recovering Deformation of Slender Workpiece

Laser hardening, compared to other surface hardening processes, presents several advantages: it can be extremely selective and almost without distortion, it achieves higher levels of hardness and thanks to the rapidity of the heating phase it does not require a quenching medium as the material surrounding the heated layer acts as a heat sink. Nevertheless, in case of workpiece with slim geometry, the thermal stress after the treatment induces a sensible deformation on the treatment direction; this deformation can deeply affect the part ability to fulfil its function and/or its reliability. In this paper a solution to recover the workpiece function ability is presented: a second laser treatment (called counter treatment) was executed on the opposite surface of the treated one to reduce the deformation induced by the first treatment. A numerical model was firstly tested and then used to simulate the counter treatment process and to evaluate the optimum process parameters. Based on the numerical analysis, experimental results show that thanks to this technique it is possible to recover up to 80% of the induced deformation.

Post Treatment Laser Irradiation For Recovery Of Deformation Induced By Surface Laser Hardening

In order to improve the wear resistance of parts without affecting the softer, tough interior of the part, laser hardening offers many advantages. Compared to conventional processes, only a shallow layer of the metal part is heated by laser irradiation to just below the melting temperature, while the surrounding material remains at ambient temperature. Due to heat conduction into the bulk material, the surface will cool down as soon as the laser beam moves away. This self‐quenching creates a particularly fine‐grained martensitic micro structure with high hardness without causing fragileness of the base material. Notably lower distortions of parts avoiding costly rework are produced due to laser beam follows the contours precisely. Nevertheless, when part is thin and slim even the low distortion caused by the laser hardening can deeply affects the part ability to function fairly. In this paper a double treatment is proposed in order to recover the bending and bulging deformation induced by the thermal cycl...

Nd:YOV4 laser surface texturing on DLC coating: Effect on morphology, adhesion, and dry wear behavior

The surface of structural components is usually subjected to higher stresses, greater wear or fatigue damage, and more direct environmental exposure than the inner parts. For this reason, the interest to improve superficial properties of items is constantly increasing in different fields as automotive, electronic, biomedical, etc. Different approaches can be used to achieve this goal: case hardening by means of superficial heat treatments like carburizing or nitriding, deposition of thin or thick coatings, roughness modification, etc. Between the available technologies to modify components surface, Laser Surface Texturing (LST) has already been recognized in the last decade as a process, which improves the tribological properties of various parts. Based on these considerations the aim of the present research work was to realize a controlled laser texture on a Diamondlike Carbon (DLC) thin coating (about 3 m thick) without damaging both the coating itself and the substrate. In particular, the effect of laser process parameters as marking speed and loop cycle were investigated in terms of texture features modifications. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the texture were executed by using a scanning electron microscope and a laser probe system to select the proper laser parameters. Moreover, the effect of the selected texture on the DLC nanohardness, adhesion and wear behavior was pointed out.

Nd:YOV4 laser polishing on WC-Co HVOF coating

WC/Co coatings are widely applied to different types of components due to their extraordinary performance properties including high hardness and wear properties. In industrial applications High Velocity Oxy-Fuel (HVOF) technique is extensively used to deposit hard metal coatings. The main advantage of HVOF compared to other thermal spray techniques is the ability to accelerate the melted powder particles of the feedstock material at a relatively high velocity, leading to obtain good adhesion and low porosity level. However, despite the mentioned benefits, the surface finish quality of WC-Co HVOF coatings results to be poor (Ra higher than 5 µm) thus a mechanical polishing process is often needed. The main problem is that the high hardness of coating leads the polishing process expensive in terms of time and tool wear; moreover polishing becomes difficult and not always possible in case of limited accessibility of a part, micro dimensions or undercuts. Nowadays a different technique available to improve su...