Experimental and numerical studies on microscale bending of stainless steel with pulsed laser

Laser forming or laser bending is a newly developed, flexible technique whi ch modifies the curvature of sheer metal by thermal residual stresses inste ad of external forces. The process is influenced by many parameters such as laser parameters, material properties, and target dimensions. In this work , a pulsed Nd:YLF laser was used as the energy source. The laser beam was f ocused into a line shape irradiating on the stainless steel specimen to ind uce bending. The bending angle was measured at various processing condition s. A finite element analysis was performed with the nse of a two-dimensiona l plane strain model to calculate the thermoelastoplastic deformation proce ss. Experimental measurements and computational results were in good agreem ent. Numerical sensitivity studies were performed to evaluate the effects o f the unavailable material property data at high temperature. It was found that both optical reflectivity and thermal expansion coefficient influenced the bending angle significantly while other extrapolated material properti es at high temperature yielded acceptable results.