Production of tailored blanks by Incremental ECAP

摘要

The paper reviews the current methods of producing tailored blanks (TBs), together with the areas of applications and possible problems. A new method of producing TBs, based on simple shear, has been proposed. It is a variant of the process, which originally has been developed as a means of refining grain structure of metals by Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP). Further development of ECAP towards an incremental version of this process (I-ECAP) enables processing very long billets and varying their thickness. Taking advantage of the latter, two different experimental rigs have been built in order to check feasibility of producing TBs by I-ECAP. TBs produced in this way have been named Tailored Sheared Blanks (TSBs). Finite element simulation of the process realised on one of these rigs provided an insight into the mechanism of changing blank thickness and strain distribution. The proposed method has several advantages such as lack of welding seams, possibility of thinning as well as thickening initial blanks, creation of thickness steps on both sides of the blank and flexible length of thickness transition.