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By using a flexible and adaptable part design and manufacturing process, a wide range of products and product families can be produced. In sheet metal forming, particularly in the automotive sector, a large number of profiles is required which are commonly used in vehicle frames. The industry's pursuit of sustainability requires parts to be lighter while maintaining their load-bearing capacity. This in turn creates the need for secondary form elements in sheet metal components, such as beads and variable cross sections, to produce load-optimised components. Components with different profile geometries and secondary form elements can be produced by roll forming or draw bending using flexible tools. This study focuses on flexible draw bending of 1.5528 sheet metal profiles with variable cross sections under continuous tempering during forming. The variable cross sections allow for load-optimised weight distribution, whilst a secondary form element in the form of a central bead may increase the overall stiffness of the component. A segmented tool with a translational degree of freedom is used in a conventional draw bending setup. The sheet metal is inductively heated before forming and rapidly cooled after the forming zone to obtain a martensitic microstructure for high strength. After modelling and validating the forming process using the Finite Element software Simufact Forming, the tool kinematics are analysed in order to identify geometric discrepancies and their causes.
Keywords: Sheet metal forming, flexible tools, finite element method© 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.