Load optimisation for air bending in the context of damage reduction

Abstract

Load optimisation applied to air bending is used to optimise the damage state in the formed component. In [1], elastomer bending is presented, where superposed stresses due to the reaction forces of the elastomer cushion lead to reduced damage growth. Replacing the elastomer cushion with compressive loads allows for optimisation of these loads such that the damage, estimated with the stress triaxiality, is reduced. The optimisation is accomplished with the commercial FEM‐Software Abaqus as the solver for the mechanical problem where Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) is used within Matlab to generate improved loads.