Plasma-Jet Forming of Sheet Metal Shapes

Plasma-jet forming is a newly proposed flexible sheet metal forming process. A non-transferred arc plasma torch is used as a controllable heat source to produce internal stress in sheet metals, causing plastic deformation without the necessity of hard tooling. This method has potential for rapid prototyping of sheet metal parts by reducing development costs and lead times. A robotic system has been used to perform simple linear bends in several different alloys. In order to develop a controllable process and to improve the forming accuracy, the effects of various process parameters on the obtained shape changes and on the resulting structure and properties have been studied. The overall goal is to understand the roles of the forming parameters and their inter-relationship in optimizing the forming procedure-a high forming speed without damage to the material structure or properties.

Study on Metal Detection with an Electromagnetic Induction Probe Utilizing a Rotating Magnetic Field

The present paper describes an investigation conducted on metal detectors installed with a scanning probe.The authors applied a rotating magnetic field probe to metal detection.The rotating magnetic field probe is comprised of two vertically placed rectangular exciting coils and a circular detecting coil.The experimental results confirmed that the probe can detect metal objects and provide more information about their shape,direction,and electromagnetic characteristics than conventional metal detector probes.A two-dimensional signal display shows a low-resolution image of the metal object and the signal phase indicates the object’s direction and electromagnetic characteristics.The experimental results show that excellent reconstruction of the surface shapes of metal objects can be obtained for both magnetic and nonmagnetic metals under present conditions.There is also the potential for the approximate shape of a metal object to be estimated from the reconstructed image.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TEMPERATURE FIELDS IN ELECTROSLAG REMELTING SLAB INGOTS

The method based on transient heat transfer model is adopted to simulate electro-slag remelting process. The calculated results of the model show that the process is in the quasi-steady state, and the shape of pool remains unchanged when the height of ingot is approximately 2.5-3 times the thickness of slab ingot. The change in the shape of pool is found to be strongly dependent on the pattern of melting rate, and hence, the power input; the depth of the molten pool increases with the increase in melting speed. It is concluded that a transient heat transfer model has to be used to obtain reliable input information for the entire, operatina time.

Shape Memory Effect,Thermal Expansion and Damping Property of Friction Stir Processed NiTip/Al Composite

NiTi particles reinforced aluminum （NiTip/Al） composite was prepared via friction stir processing, elimi- nating interfacial reaction and/or elemental diffusion. The NiTip in the composite maintained the intrinsic characteristic of a reversible thermoelastic phase transformation even after heat-treatment. The shape memory characteristic of the NiTip decreased the coefficient of thermal expansion of the Al matrix, and an apparent two-way shape memory effect was observed in the composite. The composite owned a good combination of adjustable damping and thermal physical properties.

Promotion mechanism of the pulse current on the superplastic deformation of AZ31 magnesium alloy

The effects of pulse current on the superplastic deformation of AZ31 magnesium alloy with different microstructures were examined. The results of TEM analysis showed that the dislocation movement was mainly glide, and the dislocation lines were approximate parallel with few dislocation tangles observed, which indicated that the dislocation movementwas promoted during the deformation, and therefore the formability of the coarse-grained AZ31 magnesium alloy was enhanced by the pulse current. This effect was also indicated by the asymmetrical contour of the free bulging sample, which was observed in the unidirectional pulses auxiliary equi-biaxial tensile test of coarse-grained alloy. In addition, the phenomenon of the restrained cavity growth caused by the thermoelectrical effect of the pulse current was discovered and studied.

Functionally Gradient Material Laser Rapid Prototyping Technique

The functionally gradient material laser rapid prototyping system is developed based on the increasing material manufacture idea of the rapid prototyping. The system hardware is composed of a 5 kW CO2 laser, a three-dimensional numeric control table, a three-stock-bin coaxial powder delivery device, and an integration operation control desk. The system software is composed of the CAD slicing and scan filling module, materials component distributing design module, and hardware equipment integration drive module. The real time change proportion allocation technique of three metal powders, powder uniform mixing technique, and coaxial powder delivery technique are studied. According to the principle of the output powder cumulative volume invariable in unit time, the real time powder allocation formulae are deduced. The design method of the materials component distributing regularity in the part entity is studied. The gradient change regularity of the face gradient, line gradient, and point gradient is studied. A sort of the file layout of integrating material information and geometry information is brought forward.