Influence of thickness reduction on the forming results in the three-dimensional surface rolling process with rigid arc-shaped rollers

Three-dimensional surface rolling with rigid arc-shaped rollers (TSRRAR), a new method for manufacturing double-curved metal sheets, can be used to realize the rapid forming of 3D surface sheets. The non-uniform roll gap is generated by a pair of rollers with different axial radii with appropriately reduced sheet thickness. After passing through the roll gap, a flat sheet is bent in the rolling direction. Meanwhile, it deforms perpendicular to the rolling direction, resulting in a three-dimensional surface part with curvatures in both directions. The work adopted the elastic-plastic finite element (FE) method to simulate aluminum alloy sheets with different maximum thickness reductions. The results showed that the longitudinal curvature of sheets rose as the reduction increased. Moreover, a slightly increased reduction caused a significant variation in the longitudinal curvature radius of sheets. Different bending curvatures of sheets could be obtained by changing the reduction, indicating the flexible forming of three-dimensional curved surface metal sheets. Also, the changing trend of longitudinal curvatures of testing parts obtained by rolling experiments was substantially in agreement with the FE simulation results. Therefore, the established FE models can be used for exploring the manufacturing process of TSRRAR.