Application of incremental metal forming for production of aircraft integral panels

The principle and the potential of an incremental bulk metal forming method is presented in the paper. The method can be used for manufacturing of the aircraft integral panels in a form of ribbed parts with high surface/thickness ratio. A unique laboratory device has been developed to investigate the effect of process parameters on the material flow and the press load. It utilizes tooling consisting of working rolls, a die and a punch that is divided into a number of segments. The results of preliminary numerical simulations of incremental forming and conventional forging proved that the presented forming method offers opportunity to reduce significantly required press load and to obtain more uniform strain distribution in a workpiece.