Robust design of incremental sheet forming by Taguchi's method

Although the competitiveness of Incremental Sheet Forming process can be recognized by the literature review, sonic intrinsic aspects penalize its industrial application. In particular, even if the idea to take advantage from the bigger formability appears of great interest, on the other hand the not homogeneous thickness distribution reduces the industrial suitability. However, a significant improvement in the thickness distribution can be obtained by using an "artificially modified" tool trajectory. In fact, previous experimental investigations carried out by the authors showed that it is possible to influence the thinning phenomenon by applying a proper tool trajectory. The present study was executed with the aim to design a robust procedure able to highlight how to modify the tool trajectory in order to improve the thickness distribution along the profile. More in particular, the study is based on the coupled use of the numerical analysis and the Taguchi's method. All the results are widely discussed in the paper. (C) 2013 The. Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.