A Method of Springback Prediction and Tool Shape Compensation for Multi-curvature Sheet Metal Bending

Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) are used increasingly in automobile structure parts to reduce the vehicle weight while keeping the safety standard. But their high values of the ratio of strength to Young's modulus cause more springback problems. A method of calculating the compensated tool shape for complex bending shapes is proposed in this paper. The method is composed of 3 steps: firstly the cross-section profile of a part was discretized into points and their corresponding curvatures; then an analytic algorithm based on plastic bending theory is applied to calculate the compensated curvatures of each point; finally, a numerical algorithm based on differential geometry is used to construct the tool shape according to the compensated curvatures of each point. A wave-shaped AHSS part with three different curvatures had been used to evaluate this method. The experimental results showed that the max curvature variance between the actual bending parts and desired shape is less than 4%, which is satisfying for most engineering applications.