Experimental Investigation on Electrically Assisted Incremental Sheet Metal Forming of Ti–6Al–4V Alloy

Abstract

Electrically Assisted Incremental Sheet Metal Forming (EAISMF) is a die-less forming technique to deform the hard to form sheet metals into complex three-dimensional shapes by a series of small incremental local deformations. A lightweight alloy like Ti–6Al–4V titanium alloy has enormous applications in aerospace, automobile, and biomedical industries. Although Ti–6Al–4V alloy can be formed at high temperatures, the formability of the material achieved by EAISMF process has to be identified for industrial application. In the present research, the formability of Ti–6Al–4V alloy in EAISMF process was investigated by forming a truncated cone under consideration of different process parameters such as tool diameter, sheet thickness, temperature, and wall angle. Taguchi L9 orthogonal array was employed for an experimental investigation to identify the influencing process parameter on the formability of the material during EAISMF process. The result shows that temperature is a key influencing parameter on the formability of Ti–6Al–4V sheet metal, where an increase in temperature limits the force required for plastic deformation and improves the formability of sheet metal.