IMPULSE FORMING BY

VAPORIZING FOIL ACTUATOR

Presented by,
ANJITH ANAND S S
Roll no: 01
Manufacturing and Automation
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• VAPORIZING FOIL ACTUATOR
• PARAMETRIC STUDIES
• PRESSURE ESTIMATION
• ADVANTAGES OF VFA
• MPW AND VFAW
• APPLICATIONS
• FORMING AND EMBOSSING
• DIFFERENT VFA ASSEMBLIES
• COLLISION WELDING
• CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES
 INTRODUCTION
• Passage of current (high mag)through a thin conductor can cause
its rapid vaporization.

• This will produce high p pulse which last for very short
duration.

• This can be used to achieve high v of flyer plate

(200-500m/s).

• a maximum charging voltage of 8.6 Kv and peak current was

delivered on the order of 100 kA.

• Conductor is a foil/thin wire, Usually Aluminum.

• Discharge source is a capacitor bank.

• The shape of foil control distribution of generated pulse.

• As current passes through a thin foil it quickly sublimates.

• Polyurethane pad for pressure transfer are used during forming.

VAPORIZING FOIL ACTUATOR

(A) Schematic representation showing different parts of the forming set up, (B) actual set-
up, (C) overlayed schematic of the positioning and dimensions of the steel restraint,
urethane puck and aluminum foil actuator.
Polyurethane pad
Advantages

– Elimination of alignment and mis-match problems.

– Protect the workpiece.

– Minimization of springback.

– Accommodation for thickness variations.

– The same flexible pad can be used for diff dies.

Disadvantages

– possibility of wrinkling.

– and shorter working life.

PARAMETRIC STUDIES
• Uniform deformation can be ensured if the frequency of the
discharge source is high enough and the diameter of the wire is
uniform.

• Vaporizing a thin aluminum foil under a constrained elastomer

sheet can create relatively uniform pressures over an area
larger than the foil itself.
Pressure estimation

• The pressure pulse lasts for a very short duration.

• Its measurement requires sensitive gauges with low response

times.
Bulging into a perforated plate

• Plate Bulging of a sheet metal work piece into a perforated

steel plate in explosive forming.
• The height of each formed hemisphere dimple
is inversely proportional to its radius of curvature.
• perforation last until the generated pressure balances the flow
strength of the material.
σ = P×r
2t
Punch out

• It is also possible that the dimple gets punched out before it

reaches its maximum height.

• The pressure required to punch out a circle of radius r from a

sheet of thickness t, and shear strength τ, can be estimated
from,

P = τ×2t
r
 Experimental Procedure
• Al foils of thicknesses 0.0508
mm,0.0762 mm and 0.127 mm were
cut in the shape of a dog-bone.
• The ends of the foil were left
uncovered to enable connection to the
copper terminals.

• The foil was placed on top of thick steel block.

• Polyurethane puck was placed on top of the foil.
• A perforated steel was placed on top of the workpiece
• Then backed by a thick steel block
Resulting workpieces formed by different foil actuators at various input energy levels.
 ADVANTAGES
• Main advantage include its size as compared with the traditional
press using punch.

• An agile, robust and inexpensive.

• Disposable actuator and efficient tool for impulse-based forming.

• Explosives, magnetic pulse, and underwater electric discharge are a

few other impulse metalworking.

• It counteracted the limitations of traditional metal working

processes.
Explosive metalworking:-
• Explosives has issue -inability to scale the process to thin
sheets or small weld zones because detonation not occurs
below certain size (critical di).

• Increasingly stringent safety regulations inhibit their use.

Explosive metal working step-by-step process.

Electrohydraulic metalworking:-

• Problem like inefficiency and pressure heterogeneity.

• This is due to cavitation resulting from locally high pressures

in the working media.

Magnetic pulse for metalworking:-

• Longevity of actuators above a certain magnetic pressure and

operating cycle frequency.

• Magnetic pulse based actuators are efficient only with work

pieces that are electrically conductive.

• Conductive driver sheets can be used to launch materials of

lesser conductivity, but increase time and cost.
MPW AND VFAW:-

Schematic of MPW for lap joints Schematic of VFAW for lap joints.
Results:-
• Lap joint of 1 mm thick EN AW 5005A sheets, both processes were
directly compared under the same experimental conditions.

• Vaporizing foils do not have tool life issues as they are disposable
low cost actuator.

• Tensile tests showed that high joint strengths can be achieved with
VFAW.

• Flyer v is three times higher than the maximum of the corresponding

MPW experiments.

• A weld was formed in every VFAW experiment.

 APPLICATIONS
• Can be used for forming applications.

• Used for metal embossing.

• Used for impact welding.

• Used for Shearing of sheet metal.

• Used for compaction of metallic powder.

• Emboss fine features into thin metal work pieces.

• Form deep drawn features into small die cavities.

 FORMING AND EMBOSSING
• At 8 kJ input energy, the titanium sheet tightly conformed to the fine
features of the die.

• But it sheared severely around the die and some of the embossed
features.

• High speed encourages shearing by reducing the energy required for it.

(i)A small discharge (3.2 kJ) to flange the work piece relatively slowly
to allow sufficient draw-in.

(ii)Two high-speed flanging steps (5.6 kJ each) implemented by

impacting copper drivers onto the back surface of the pre-formed
aluminum work piece, to form it fully into the cellphone case die.
Cellphone case die provided by MIRDC (Taiwan).
• Minor shape imperfection can be noticed in the center of each
of the formed.

• Accelerated to a peak velocity of 270 m/s, while the pre-

formed work piece has maximum velocity of 540 m/s.

• Repetition of these diagnostic experiments yielded very

reproducible results.

• 1st case the pressure pulse travels through the urethane pad and
gets transferred on to the work piece.

• 2nd case the urethane pad impacts the surface of the sheet and
launches it at a velocity of nearly twice its own velocity.
 CP titanium sheet formed by one-step urethane pad assisted vaporizing foil forming
with input energy of 8 kJ.

CP titanium sheet formed by hybrid forming technique at input energy of 6.4 kJ.
Current, voltage and velocity records during forming of 0.508 mm thick CP-Ti sheets
into an embossed cavity. Flat sheets were launched with 8 kJ and pre-formed sheets were
launched with 6.4 kJ input energy into the vaporizing foil actuator.
DIFFERENT VFA ASSEMBLIES:

Vaporizing foil actuator assemblies for (a) forming and embossing, (b) shearing,
(c) powder compaction.
 COLLISION WELDING:-
• Occurs only when the collision angles and velocities are within
an optimum range called the welding window.

• Collision velocity is in the range of 150–1500 m/s and the

collision angle is between 5◦and 20◦.

• The welding window only indicates the presence or absence of

a good weld under a given set of input parameters; it does not
quantify the strength of the weld.
 Generic welding window based on Akbari Mousavi and Satrangi (2009).

• VFAW was used for the first time for welding window
determination of CP Ti–Cu couple.
Experimental set up for the welding window determination using VFAW:
(a) side view showing the angled grooves in the target plate, (b) front view
showing the positioning of the standoffs, (c) top view, (d) mid-experiment
side view of the weld interface.
Source:
Flyers’ velocity evolution with respect to distance traveled due
to its launch by VFA at different input energies.
Source:
•Three types of weld interfaces were obtained during this run of
experiments.

Three different types of weld interfaces: (a) melted due to excessive VW(5748 m/s) for a
given ˇ (8◦), (b) wavy for ideal VW(1893 m/s) for a given ˇ (24◦), (c) un-welded due to
insufficient VW(937 m/s) for a given ˇ (28◦).
Souce:
• Vw was calculated based on collision velocity (VP) and β.
Vw = Vp
sin β
• velocity was too high for a given collision angle then melting
along the inter-face was observed.
• while if it was too low then very weak or no welds were
formed.
• If the welding velocity and collision angles were within the
welding window then a wavy interface with no melt zones was
observed.
 CONCLUSIONS
• This development is not intended to replace the existing high rate
forming methods such as EHF, EXF or EMF.

• To supplement them where their application is not suitable.

• Significant work needs to be done in terms of modeling, parameter

optimization, and cost analysis before this technique can be
regularly applied.

• VFAW was found to be a robust collision welding technique, able to

successfully weld various dissimilar metal pairs.

• Use of pressure sensors for direct measurement of pressure is also

intended for future work.
 REFERENCES
[1] Hahn, Marlon, Christian Weddeling, Geoffrey Taber, Anupam Vivek, Glenn S.
Daehn, and A. Erman Tekkaya. "Vaporizing foil actuator welding as a competing
technology to magnetic pulse welding." Journal of Materials Processing
Technology230 (2016): 8-20.
[2] Raoelison, R. N., T. Sapanathan, N. Buiron, and M. Rachik. "Magnetic pulse
welding of Al/Al and Al/Cu metal pairs: Consequences of the dissimilar
combination on the interfacial behavior during the welding process." Journal of
Manufacturing Processes 20 (2015): 112-127.
[3] Vivek, A., S. R. Hansen, B. C. Liu, and Glenn S. Daehn. "Vaporizing foil actuator:
A tool for collision welding." Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213, no.
12 (2013): 2304-2311.
[4] Vivek, Anupam, and Glenn S. Daehn. "Vaporizing foil actuator: a versatile tool for
high energy-rate metal working." Procedia Engineering 81 (2014): 2129-2134.
[5] Vivek, A., Brune, R. C., Hansen, S. R., & Daehn, G. S. (2014). Vaporizing foil
actuator used for impulse forming and embossing of titanium and aluminum
alloys. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 214(4), 865-875.
[6] Vivek, Anupam, Geoffrey A. Taber, Jason R. Johnson, and Glenn S. Daehn.
"Vaporizing Foil Actuator: a Tool for Creating High‐Pressure Impulses for
Metalworking." In 60 Excellent Inventions in Metal Forming, pp. 77-82. Springer
Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015.
THANK YOU