Numerical and Experimental Research on the Feasibility for Plasma Arc Forming of Laminated Clad Metal Sheets Containing Defects

In this paper, a FEM mode was developed to study the feasibility of the plasma arc bending of the laminated clad metal sheets (LCMS) containing defects. The three layer LCMS of stainless steel/mild steel/stainless steel was selected as the sample. The influences of the defects on the temperature field and deformation field were investigated. Besides, the bending experiments were performed to examine the feasibility. The results show that there is a sharp rise of temperature around the defect due to the lower thermal conductivity which causes the possible partial melting of the formed parts. The existence of the defect exacerbates the unevenness of the thickness along the heating line. But the delamination of the interface does not occur because of the instantaneous variations of the stress under the high temperature, which is consistent with the experiments.