Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

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Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/simpat

Tool path optimization for single point incremental sheet forming

using response surface method
Mohamed Azaouzi a,⇑, Nadhir Lebaal b
a
Advanced Material and Structure Department, Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor, 66 rue de Luxembourg, L-4002 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
b
Mechanical Engineering and Design Department, Université de Technologie de Belfort–Monbéliard, F-90010 Belfort, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Incremental sheet forming (ISF) process is based on localized plastic deformation in a thin
Received 23 September 2011 sheet metal blank. It consists to deform progressively and locally the sheet metal using
Received in revised form 18 December 2011 spherical forming tool controlled by a CNC machine-tool. Although it is a slow process
Accepted 31 January 2012
compared to conventional forming technique such as stamping. The cost reduction linked
Available online 6 March 2012
to the fact that punches and dies are avoided which makes it a very attractive process for
small batch production and rapid prototyping. However, ISF process depends strongly on
Keywords:
the forming tool path which influences greatly the part geometry and sheet thickness dis-
Incremental sheet forming
Finite element analyses
tribution. A homogeneous thickness distribution requires a rigorous optimization of the
Numerical simulation parameter settings, and an optimal parameterization of the forming strategy. This paper
Tool path optimization shows an optimization procedure tested for a given forming strategy, in order to reduce
Response surface method the manufacturing time and homogenize thickness distribution of an asymmetric part.
The optimal forming strategy was determined by finite element analyses (FEA) in combi-
nation with response surface method (RMS) and sequential quadratic programming
(SQP) algorithm.
Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

ISF is a flexible process which does not need dedicated forming tools. A sheet of metal is formed by a progression of local-
ized plastic deformation using a simple hemispherical tool, controlled by a CNC milling machine-tool. The tool moves over
the surface of the sheet and the final shape is built progressively according to the tool motion, such that a highly localized
plastic deformation is caused. Thus, a varied and complex 3D shapes can be achieved by moving the tool along a correctly
designed path, without the need to manufacture specialized tools. In addition, ISF has been shown to give increased forming
limits in comparison to conventional stamping process [1–3]. Although, the process is slow and depends on the parts dimen-
sions and geometry. It is well suited for small batch and customized production and it is also considered as a rapid proto-
typing technique [4–6].
The two most common configurations of ISF are Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF), where the bottom contour of the
part is supported by a rig, and Two Point Incremental Forming (TPIF), where a full or partial positive die supports critical
regions of the parts (Fig. 1). In both cases the most common tool paths are contours or spirals of increasing depth, following
the profile of the product. Most investigations of SPIF process have concerned applications and formability limits of the pro-
cess [7-9]. The experimental investigations [10,11] lead to the conclusion that the formability of the process can be defined
in terms of four major parameters: tool velocity and radius, sheet thickness and forming strategy. Some papers related to the
optimization of forming strategies in ISF process have been published [12–14].

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +352 42 59 91 1; fax: +352 42 59 91 555.

E-mail address: mohamed.azaouzi@tudor.lu (M. Azaouzi).

1569-190X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.simpat.2012.01.008
50 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

Fig. 1. Process variants in ISF [12].

At the beginning of this paper, numerical modeling of the SPIF process is presented in Section 2. Mathematical formula-
tion of the optimization problem is given in Section 3. Principle of the optimization procedure is described in Section 4.
Numerical simulation and optimization of the SPIF process are discussed in Section 5. Further investigations that will be con-
ducted in the future are presented in Section 6. Finally, summary of the numerical results are presented in Section 7.

2. Modeling of the SPIF process

An asymmetric part (diameter D: 120 mm and depth H: 20 mm) obtained from a square blank sheet (140  140 mm) was
studied considering the SPIF process (Fig. 2). The sheet was clamped into a fixed rectangular blank holder (clamp). A spher-
ical forming tool (Diameter: 30 mm) was used to create the sheet component by a continuous CNC movement, as prescribed
by the data based on the CAD model, in combination with a stationary die (Rig). The sheet is an Aluminum Alloy (AL1050)
which the thickness is 1.5 mm. The material properties are as follow: Young modulus E = 69 GPa, density q = 2700 Kg/m3,
yield stress ry = 60 MPa and Poisson coefficient m = 0.33. The friction coefficient and the tool velocity are respectively 0.1
and 0.16 ms1.
The part is formed according to a spiral tool path as it shown in Fig. 3. The tool starts from the center of the part and opens
up with increasing depth until the desired diameter at the maximum depth is reached. The tool path is prescribed by NC data
that is generated from a CAD model of the component to be formed. The forming strategy consists of a single forming stage
where the tool traces along a sequence of contour lines with a vertical feed in between (vertical pitch = 2 mm). The part is
formed progressively and locally around the tool thanks to its CNC-controlled movement. Using this forming strategy it is
obvious that there are a relatively large number of adjustable process parameters that can influence the forming process
for a given geometry such as the radius and velocity of the forming tool or the vertical pitch (size of the step down).
ABAQUS/Explicit finite element code [15] has been used to investigate the SPIF process. The explicit integration schema
was adopted rather than the implicit schema for two reasons: firstly, due to the permanent changes of the contact boundary
conditions, the time steps have to be small in SPIF simulations and secondly, the explicit schema has the advantage to speed
up the numerical simulation by increasing artificially the mass density. The tool paths were generated using MATLAB routine
then translated into input file format to perform numerical simulations with ABAQUS. The Aluminum Alloy sheet was mod-
eled as an elasto-plastic material with isotropic hardening using material data obtained from tensile tests. The sheet was
meshed with 4900 rectangular shell finite element (dimensions: 2  2 mm) considering reduced integration. The tools
(clamp, rig and spherical tool) are supposed to be analytical rigid surface. The parameters of the finite element model (mesh-
ing, mass scaling and contact algorithm) are selected after several numerical simulations to evaluate their influence on the
computational time and to achieve good results.

Fig. 2. SPIF process principle.

 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58 51

Fig. 3. Spiral tool path.

3. Optimization problem

The goal of the optimization is to find the shortest tool path which distributes the material as evenly as possible through-
out the part. As a consequence of volume conservation, the part with the largest possible minimum sheet thickness would
have a homogeneous distribution of thickness. To make any point thicker would require taking material from another point,
reducing the minimum sheet thickness. Thus, the fitness of a given tool path is taken to be the minimum value of thickness in
the simulated part resulting from that tool path. In the current work, an optimization problem (P) was formulated to find an
optimal spiral tool path. The purpose is to minimize the manufacturing time and reduce thinning while forming the part. The
optimization problem can be formulated as follow:
8
< Min FðxÞ
>
ðPÞ : Such that gðxÞ 6 0 ð1Þ
>
:
with : xu 6 x 6 xv
where F(x) is the objective function and g(x) is the inequality constraints functions, xu and xv represents the lower and upper
bands of the design variables vector.

3.1. Objective and constraint function

The normalized objective function to minimize depends on the tool course L, and is expressed as:

LðxÞ
FðxÞ ¼ ð2Þ
L0
where L0 is the initial tool course.
To control the thinning as the tool path changes, the formed part was analyzed using the constraint function defined as
follow:

Emin ðxÞ
gðxÞ ¼ 1  60 ð3Þ
ð1  aÞ:E0
where E0 is the initial sheet thickness, Emin is the minimum sheet thickness of the formed part and a represents the amount
of maximum thinning in the initial formed part (reduction of thickness calculated after forming with the initial tool path).
52 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

Fig. 4. Design variables.

 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58 53

Fig. 5. Flowchart of the optimization procedure.

3.2. Design variables

To obtain a part without defect and with a short forming time, its achievement could be obtained by controlling the tool
path during the forming process. To optimize the spiral tool path, two design variables (Fig. 4a and b) have been considered:
the number of vertical pitches or tours n, 3 6 n 6 10 and the weighting factor a which control the envelop of the tool path,
0.1 6 a 6 1.
Numerical simulation of the tool path consists in introducing the punctual coordinates of the tool as a sequence of points.
While going at each time from a position (i) to another position (i + 1) with an imposed displacement Dui, the number of
points was selected in a way to ensure the proportionality to the increasing diameter of the spiral path at each depth. In this
case, the smoothing of the tool path at each point can be guaranteed. The parametric equation of the tool movement is writ-
ten as follow:
8
< XðbÞ ¼ RðbÞ cosðbÞ
>
YðbÞ ¼ RðbÞ sinðbÞ ð4Þ
>
:
ZðbÞ ¼ Z2max
pn

R(b) is the radius depending on the weighting factor a, the angle of rotation b and the number of vertical pitches n. Zmax is the
maximum forming depth. R(b) is calculated using the following equation:
" #
expððf =aÞ2 Þ  expðð1=aÞ2 Þ
RðbÞ ¼ R0 1  ð5Þ
1  expðð1=aÞ2 Þ

where f ¼ 2pb n, 0 6 b 6 2p n

4. Optimization procedure

The objective function f(x) is obtained through a simulation. It cannot be evaluated analytically and so no information
about its gradients is available without performing a huge number of simulations. The large solution space, lack of gradient
54 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

or other analytical information and use of simulation all suggest that search optimization methods would be most appropri-
ate for optimizing tool paths. In order to decrease the evaluation number of the objective and constraint functions we use in
this work response surface method [16]. This method consists in the construction of an approximate expression of the objec-
tive and constraint functions starting from a limited number of evaluations of the real functions. In order to obtain a good
approximation, Kriging interpolation [17] has been used. In this method, the approximation is computed by using the eval-
uation points obtained considering composite Design of Experiment (DOE) technique.
The Kriging interpolation is applied here to interpolate very efficiently complex surfaces of arbitrary shapes in an explicit
form according to the variables of optimization. The approximate construction of the objective and constraint function can
be expressed as follow:
eJðxÞ ¼ pT ðxÞ a þ ZðxÞ with; pðxÞ ¼ ½p ðxÞ; . . . ; p ðxÞT ð6Þ
1 m
T
where m denotes the number of the basis function in regression model, a ¼ ½a1 ; . . . ; am  is the coefficient vector, x are the
design variables, eJðxÞ is the unknown objective or constraint interpolation function, and Z(x) is the random fluctuation.
The term pT(x)a in Eq. (6) indicates a global model of the design space, which is similar to the polynomial model in a Mov-
ing Least Squares (MLS) approximation. The second part in Eq. (6) is a correction of the global model. It is used to model the
deviation from pT(x)a so that the whole model interpolates response data from the function.
The output responses from the function are given as follow:
FðxÞ ¼ ff1 ðxÞ; f2 ðxÞ; . . . ; f n ðxÞg ð7Þ
From these outputs the unknown parameters a can be estimated:

a ¼ ðP T R1 PÞ1 PT R1 F ð8Þ

where P is a vector including the value of p(x) and R is the correlation matrix, which is composed of the correlation function
evaluated for each possible combination of the design points:
2 3
2 3 wðx  x1 Þ 0  0
Rðx1 ; x1 Þ    Rðx1 ; xn Þ 6 7
6 7 6 0 wðx  x2 Þ    0 7
R¼6 .. .. .. 7þ6 7 ð9Þ
4 . . . 5 6 .
. .
. .
. .
. 7
4 . . . . 5
Rðxn ; x1 Þ    Rðxn ; xn Þ
0 0    wðx  xn Þ

Rij ¼ jxi  xj j ð10Þ

A weight function of Gaussian type with a circular support is adopted for the Kriging interpolation, because its derivatives
with respect to the coordinates exist to any desired order. It takes the following expression:
( 2 2

1  expððdi =cÞ Þexpððr w =cÞ Þ
2 di 6 r w
W i ðxÞ ¼ 1expððr =cÞ Þ
w ð11Þ
1 di P r w
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Pn J ffi
J 2
where di ¼ J¼1 x  xðiÞ Þ is the distance from a discrete node xi to a sampling point x in the domain of support with radius
rw, and c is the dilation parameter. c ¼ r4w is used in computation.

Fig. 6. Convergence history.

 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58 55

Fig. 7. Optimized spiral tool path.

Table 1
Summary of the results.

Initial Optimal Reduction

Tool path (mm) 1600 640.64 59.96%
Minimum sheet thickness (mm) 0.79 0.9 7.3%
Constraint function g 0.42 0.6 –
Number of vertical pitches 10 5 50%
Weighting factor a – 0.55 –

The second part in Eq. (6) is in fact an interpolation of the residuals of the regression model pT(x)a. Thus, all response data
will be exactly predicted and are given as follow:

ZðxÞ ¼ r T ðxÞb with; r T ðxÞ ¼ fRðx; x1 Þ; . . . ; Rðx; xn Þg ð12Þ

The parameters b are defined as follows:

b ¼ R1 ðF  PaÞ ð13Þ

Once the approximation of the objective and constraint functions are built for each iteration, the SQP algorithm can be used
to obtain the optimal approximate solution which respects the imposed nonlinear constraints. To avoid the fact of falling into
a local optimum, and to respect the imposed constraint, we use an automatic procedure which allows the launch of the SQP
algorithm starting from each point of our DOE (see Fig. 5). We take then the best approximate solution among those obtained
by the various optimizations. Then, another approximate function is built by taking into account the weight function of
Gaussian type which allows to slightly change the interpolation and makes the approximation more accurate locally (cen-
tered around the best minimum). Next, another minimization is carried out by the SQP algorithm with the initial point which
represents the best optimum. The iterative procedure stops when the successive points of the approximate function are
superposed with a tolerance of 106. Finally, another evaluation is carried out to obtain the real response in the optimization
iteration.

5. Numerical simulation

5.1. Optimal tool path

The convergence history of optimization is illustrated in Fig. 6. The optimal solution was obtained at the third iteration. To
respect the constraint while ensuring the minimum tool course, it can be noticed that the objective function decrease in the
first iteration and increase progressively to converge at the third iteration. The augmentation of the objective function is due
to the constraint function g. In fact, to respect the constraint g which must be negative, the optimization algorithm (SQP)
increases slightly the objective function. A total number of 27 numerical simulations have been performed to get the optimal
tool path which has been reduced by 60% in comparison to the initial tool course (Fig. 7). Table 1 presents a summary of the
56 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

Fig. 8. Vertical displacement Uz (a and b) and sheet thickness distribution (c and d).

results corresponding to the initial and optimal tool path. The optimization strategy clearly showed its capacity to obtain an
optimal solution with a fast convergence.

5.2. Thickness and geometry

It is obvious that after the third iteration the imposed constraint has been respected and the optimal solution provided an
improvement of about 7% regarding the sheet thickness distribution (Fig. 8a and b) at the maximum forming depth. In the
center of the part, the thinning has changed and decreased to almost 1 mm. Certainly, the thinning has been reduced at the
maximum forming depth, but it can be observed that the surface aspect of the part has been changed after optimization,
because of the forming strategy (Fig. 8c and d). While a large pitch value is beneficial for the thickness distribution, a smooth
surface would require a dedicated finishing stage.

5.3. Forming force

The forming forces depend largely on the proper design of the tool path. Fig. 9 shows the reaction forces during forming
before and after optimization of the spiral tool path. The reaction forces corresponding to the initial forming strategy
 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58 57

Fig. 9. History of the forming force.

Fig. 10. Forming in two stages with the spiral tool paths to be optimized.

increase progressively up to 7400 N. This strategy generates many oscillations which become more visible at the end of
forming. The amount of oscillations can be reduced by decreasing the finite element mesh size of the part. The reactions
forces related to the optimal forming strategy increase more significantly but very little oscillations are observable at the
end of forming. Two peaks on the reactions forces curve obtained by the optimal tool path can be noticed, 8030 N
(Uz = 10.75 mm) and 10900 N (Uz = 19.5 mm). The improvement in sheet thickness distribution can be explained by the dim-
inution of reaction forces which occurs almost at the middle of forming depth considering the optimal tool path.

6. Future work

Further investigations could be conducted in order to improve the surface quality of the part by reducing the amount of
fluctuations observed over the sheet surface after optimization (Fig. 8b). To surmount this problem in a future work, an opti-
mization problem will be defined by considering two forming stages as it shown in Fig. 10. The first and second stages are
defined respectively by the depths (h and H) and diameters (d, D). H and D are fixed in order to produce the same part geom-
etry. The two parameters h and d could be fixed or considered as a design variables. Both forming strategy will be param-
etrized using Eqs. (4) and (5). That implies four design variables should be taken into account which are the number of tours
and weighting factor corresponding respectively to each forming stage: (n1, a1) and (n2, a2). The purpose is to optimize the
spiral tool path at each stage. Additional optimization techniques will be tested such as the genetic algorithm and simplex
search method [12]. Finally, as full-scale finite element calculations of the process are time-consuming, simplified process
models could be developed in order to allow for a faster evaluation of the outcome of a given multistep forming strategy.

7. Conclusion and perspectives

In this paper, a new parameterized forming strategy for the tool path optimization in single point incremental sheet form-
ing is developed. It was verified that the proposed method based on FEA coupled with RSM and SQP together with Kriging
interpolation provides an optimal tool path after 27 finite element calculations and within a reasonable computational time.
It has been observed also that there are conflicting relations between the criterions of sheet metal forming and the solutions
58 M. Azaouzi, N. Lebaal / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 24 (2012) 49–58

that minimize the objective function while preventing that the part thinning do not increase and at the same time respecting
the part geometry and minimizing the sheet thickness variability. In that essence, future works will focus on the parameter-
ization of a multi-stage forming strategy since this approach could improve the part geometry and reduce the thickness var-
iability. Also, it should be mentioned that the integration of an additional constraint function within the optimization
problem of the tool path could minimize the geometrical defect observed over the sheet part.
RSM depends strongly on the problem size and order of the approximation models; therefore, the use of RSM in conjunc-
tion with Moving Least Square (MLS) approximation could be advantageous by considering a moving region of interest with-
in the design space. The MLS approximation maximizes the accuracy and minimizes the number of function evaluations and
consequently the number of finite element calculation. Furthermore, adaptive RSM is a technique that could be of practical
use because it is able to be re-built automatically in the gradually reduced design space. It is also possible to investigate fur-
ther optimization methodologies to find an optimum design, such as the combination between RSM and genetic algorithm or
particle swarm or simplex search technique of the optimal solution. Finally, additional technique of approximation could be
used with RSM, such as least squares, radial basis functions or partition of unity along with strategies for progressive selec-
tion of points in the design space.

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