from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Metal forming can be regarded as a process, during which materials are treated by “force” and “heating” under a certain external load and boundary condition (loading mode, rate of loading, constraint condition, geometry, contact friction condition, temperature field). Materials vary in formability and structure properties. The change of geometry depends not only on the loading conditions of external forces, temperature, frictional andconstraint conditions, but also on the change of properties, such as resistance to deformation and hardening of materials. During the working process, it is still hard to accurately predict the variation of temperature, deformation velocity and friction conditions. The microstructure and properties of materials have more complex variations. The movement of dislocations, grain boundary deformation, crystallization, recovery and recrystallization, second-phase precipitation, texture deformation and grain elongation usually take place at the thermoforming state, which diversifies the properties and the microstructure of materials greatly.Consequently, it becomes a scientific task to predict and control these complex changes of materials in the metal forming process. New metal forming technologies may be developed using new energy resources, new forming mediums and new loading methods for developing new products according to the needs of the automotive, electrical, electronic and aerospace industries. Some examples of these technologies will be presented in this paper.
Keywords: forming technology, incremental forming, tube hydroforming© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.