Experimental Study on Flow Forming Process and its Numerical Validation

Flow forming is the plastic deformation process and continuously used to produce high precision seamless components for aerospace and defence industries. In this process, a deformable workpiece is placed over rotating mandrel then rotating roller(s) deforming it under contact zone. This process consists of two variants viz. forward and reverses. In forward variant, the roller feed and deformation directions are same but in reverse variant; the roller motion and deformation directions are opposite. Further, it is important to have knowledge about power consumption as well as the formability during the process to establish energy efficient production environment for various material as well as geometrical aspects. The process requires to be optimized in such fashion that the power consumption is minimum but at the same time formability has to be increased to promote energy conservation. With this aim, an experimental study is carried out to investigate effect of process parameters on power consumption, surface roughness and formability. Three levels of three parameters (i.e. rotational speed, axial feed and reduction percentage) have been taken for present study. Taguchi design of experiment technique has been used because it is well developed method to investigate costly and time consuming experiments. Later, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been carried out to find most significant parameter. It was found that speed is the most significant factor affecting the power consumption. Also, surface roughness of the formed components has been significantly affected by axial feed. It has been discerned that all three parameters are significantly affecting formability (percentage elongation). It was also noticed that surface texture of formed part had fish scaling marks at higher rotational speed, higher axial feed and lower reduction. Moreover, numerical analysis (using ABAQUS) has been carried out to validate the results and those were found in good accordance. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Emerging Trends in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering (IMME17).