Experimental and numerical investigation of laser bending of tailor machined blanks with different bending mechanisms

In this work, the laser bending of tailor machined blanks has been investigated with experimental tests and finite element simulations. It should be noted because of presence of different thicknesses in the tailor machined blanks, their laser bending process is more complicated than the monolithic sheets. In addition, multi-curvature bending phenomenon that is the non-uniformity of deformations in the transverse direction can appear more considerably in the laser bending process of tailor machined blanks than the monolithic sheets. In this paper, a new irradiating scheme has been proposed based on laser scanning speed variations for laser bending of tailor machined blanks. It is proved that with the proposed irradiating method, the differences in the bending angles of thin and thick sections of tailor machined blanks and also multi-curvature bending phenomenon has been extremely decreased. The results of bending angle and multi-curvature bending phenomenon with considering the different mechanisms in thin and thick sections of tailor machined blank demonstrate that the proposed irradiating scheme is an appropriate method for laser bending of tailor machined blanks.