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Development of a flattening system for sheet metal with free-form surface

Article in Advances in Mechanical Engineering · February 2016

DOI: 10.1177/1687814016630517

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Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2016, Vol. 8(2) 1–12
Ó The Author(s) 2016
Development of a flattening system for DOI: 10.1177/1687814016630517
aime.sagepub.com
sheet metal with free-form surface

Xinhua Liu1, Shengpeng Li1, Xianhua Zheng2 and Mingxing Lin3

Abstract
In order to improve the flattening quality of sheet metal with free-form surface, a flattening system was developed. The
system framework was proposed and the key technologies such as mesh quality measuring criterion, center triangle
indexing algorithm, coordinate transforming principle, and initial flattening method were elaborated. Moreover, a planar
spring–mass model was presented to optimize the initial flattening result, and the flowchart of the proposed flattening
method was designed. Finally, three simulation examples were carried out and the comparison results indicated that the
proposed system was proved feasible and efficient.

Keywords
Free-form surface flattening, mesh quality measuring criterion, center triangle indexing algorithm, planar spring–mass
model

Date received: 16 May 2015; accepted: 28 December 2015

Academic Editor: Michal Kuciej

Introduction analyzing flattening process, the problems in the initial

Nowadays, the sheet metal with free-form surface is
applied widely in industries, such as the manufacturing
process of airplane, ship, and automobile.1 With the
rapid development of computer-aided design (CAD)
technology, a variety of beautiful appearance sheet
metals with the free-form surface can be designed eas-
ily. However, before planning manufacturing processes,
it is very difficult and tedious to get the shape and geo-
metry size of the blank. Thus, a high demand for flat-
tening technology of sheet metal with free-form surface
is put forward.
The flattening technology of sheet metal with free-
form surface provides the data information of the opti-
mum blank that can be used to carry out blank layout
and incision. Meanwhile, a reasonable blank shape not
only saves raw material, reduces subsequent panel trim-
ming process, and cuts down production cost but also
provides a valuable tool to improve the forming condi-
tions and quality. In addition, the flattening process is
the inverse process for sheet metal forming. By
design of sheet metal can be discovered, such as stress
concentration, cracks, and wrinkles, and the designer
can revise the initial CAD model of sheet metal.2
Therefore, it is very important to research the flattening
technology for free-form surface.
The process of flattening free-form surface equals to
the mapping process of surface from three-dimensional
1
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, China University of
Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
2
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Yangtze Normal
University, Chongqing, China
3
School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, China
Corresponding authors:
Xinhua Liu, School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, China
University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China.
Email: l_xinhua_2006@126.com
Mingxing Lin, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University,
Jinan 250061, China.
Email: mxlin@sdu.edu.cn

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2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
(3D) space to two-dimensional plane. In the strict sense,
the mapping mainly depends on isometric mapping
(ISOMAP) which keeps the geodesic distance between
two arbitrary points unchanged pre and post mapping.3
The traditional flattening methods for sheet metal are
mainly made up of the graphic method and the analytic
flattening which are only applied to a kind of sheet
metal with a regular shape, but it is helpless for free-
form surface.
Bearing the above observation in mind, we present a
flattening system for sheet metal with free-form surface
and the rest of this article is organized as follows. In
section ‘‘Literature review,’’ some related works are
outlined based on the literature. The system framework
and the main functional modules are presented in sec-
tion ‘‘Framework of the proposed system.’’ The key
technologies of the proposed system are put forward
and discussed in section ‘‘Key technologies.’’ Some
simulation examples are provided to test and verify the
proposed system in section ‘‘Simulation examples and
discussion.’’ The conclusions and future work are sum-
marized in section ‘‘Conclusion and future work.’’ With
the proposed method of this article, a flattening system
for sheet metal with free-form surface was designed
and implemented to improve the flattening quality of
sheet metal; this system can widely be used to design
and manufacture shape designing of car and electric
appliance and reverse engineering and so on.
Literature review
Recent publications relevant to this article are mainly
concerned with flattening methods. In this section, we
try to summarize the relevant literature.
Flattening method
For flattening method, lots of research has been done
since the late 1980s and most of them can be classified
into three categories: geometry flattening method, finite
element method, and flattening method based on
energy model.
Manning4 developed a system for surface develop-
ment based on an isometric tree and the system is
applied in the garment industry. Hinds et al.5 developed
doubly curved surfaces by first approximating them by
quadrilateral facets on the basis of Gaussian curvature
and then flattening these facets allowing some gaps in
the developed result. Similar to Hinds et al., DR Chen
et al.6 proposed a concept of quasi-rulings to adaptively
segment the 3D surface. Azariadis and colleagues7–9
extended Hinds’ research to reduce the gaps by mini-
mizing the Euclidean distances of pairs of the corre-
sponding points between two successive strips. Kim and
Shin10 presented a surface flattening method using two
guide surfaces. Sheffer and De Sturler11 proposed a
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method to compute planar triangulations of triangu-
lated surfaces for surface parameterization. The method
solved a nonlinear system of equations to obtain the
flattening result.
Shimada and Tada12 proposed a finite element
method using the initial guess for stresses on the sur-
face. Chung and Richmond13–15 proposed the finite ele-
ment inverse method on the basis of ideal forming
theory to obtain the sheet metal blank. Different with
any other methods, these methods did not directly map
the triangular mesh surface in the space to the plane,
but predicted a planar triangle mesh which had the
same geometrical topology structure with the surface in
the space. Similar studies can also be found in Cai
et al.16 and Shimada and Tada.17
McCartney et al.18 proposed an algorithm to flatten
3D surface. The algorithm incorporated energy model
in terms of the strain energy required to deform the
edges of the triangular mesh. Wang and Wang19 pro-
posed a general surface development algorithm based
on a spring–mass model to release the energy stored in
the initial flattening result. The area error and length
error are adopted in this article to evaluate the flatten-
ing result. J Li et al.20 made a little improvement to the
traditional spring–mass model by adding crossed
springs which could prevent the flattened mesh from
stretching too much. Q Liu et al.21 proposed a simpli-
fied spring–mass model to release the energy. They only
focused on the resultant force direction and the maxi-
mum edge length distortion. Similarly, Q Zhang et al.22
established a hinge joint system of bars to optimize the
initial flattening result. Other research achievements
using the energy-based method can also be found in
Zhong and Xu,23 Chung et al.,24 and Zhang et al.25
Discussion
Although many flattening methods for free-form sur-
face have been developed in the above literature, they
have some common disadvantages summarized as fol-
lows. First, most of the researchers have not considered
the mesh quality which will affect the quality of the flat-
tening surface. Second, the influence of base triangle
has been researched rarely. Finally, the initial flattening
result obtained by the existing methods is rough which
has many cracks and overlaps.
Based on our past research on flattening free-form
surface, this article tries to tackle the above problems.
Main improvements of this article can be summarized
as follows: (1) the mesh quality measuring criterion is
proposed to ensure the quality of surface mesh, (2) the
center triangle indexing algorithm is adopted to get an
ideal base triangle, and (3) the concept of flattening
unit and initial flattening method is proposed to avoid
cracks and overlaps.
Liu et al.
Figure 1. Framework of the proposed system.
Framework of the proposed system
The flattening system for sheet metal with free-form
surface developed in this article mainly consists of three
modules: pre-processing module, flattening module,
and post-processing module. The relationship between
these three modules is illustrated in Figure 1. The func-
tionalities of the modules are elaborated as follows:
1. Pre-processing module. It mainly includes extract-
ing the free-form surface, meshing algorithm,
and mesh quality measuring criterion. The
import format of 3D model can be IGES, STP,
and SAT file formats. The 3D model is trans-
formed into a free-form surface first and then the
free-form surface would be divided into a trian-
gular mesh surface with perfect mesh quality.
2. Flattening module. It mainly includes center tri-
angle indexing algorithm, coordinate transform-
ing principle, initial flattening method, and
optimizing model. The circular chain of trian-
gles linking with the flattened triangles is defined
as a flattening unit in this article. After the trian-
gular mesh surface is processed in this module,
an ideal flatten result can be obtained.
3. Post-processing module. It mainly includes error
analyzing and profile curve fitting. The output
format of the flattening result is DXF to facili-
tate data exchange with other CAD/computer-
aided manufacturing (CAM) software.
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3
Key technologies
Mesh quality measuring criterion
The surface mesh generating algorithm based on the
advancing front method is adopted in this article.26 The
algorithm has a strong adaptability and the mesh den-
sity can be easily controlled according to the Gaussian
curvature. Besides, the algorithms have the advantages
of high automaticity and fast rate of computation; its
computing efficiency is O(N log N), where N is the total
number of triangular meshes.
If the mesh quality cannot meet the algorithm
requirements in the flattening system, the convergence
of the algorithm cannot be satisfied easily, and then
there would be many overlaps and cracks in the flatten-
ing result. Thus, it is very necessary to ensure the mesh
quality in the flattening algorithm. Therefore, a mesh
quality measuring criterion is proposed in this section.
The mesh quality of individual triangle can be
denoted as d
pffiffiffi kCA 3 CBk
d=2 3 ð1Þ
kCAk + kABk2 + kBC k2
2
where AB, BC, and CA are the edges of triangle. Using
this formula, the mesh quality of regular triangle equal
to 1 andpthe
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi mesh quality of isosceles right triangle
equal to 3=2 can be easily obtained.
The mesh quality of the whole triangular mesh sur-
face can be denoted as D
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

P
N
di
i=1
D= ð2Þ
N
Obviously, D 2 (0, 1. If the value of mesh quality D
is more close to 1, the mesh quality would be better.

Center triangle indexing algorithm

During the flattening process, the first triangle, named
as base triangle, can be flattened to a specific plane with
no deformation. It is a very important to select an ideal
base triangle for the flattening result.27 The center trian-
gle T0 of the triangular mesh surface is treated as base
triangle in this article. The arithmetic flow for indexing Figure 2. The schematic diagram of center triangle indexing.
the center triangle can be presented as follows.
Define variable index-number, int*IndexNO = P1 P2
Rx = ½ r1x r2x r3x  = jP1 P2 j, Ry = ½ r1y r2y r3y  =
NULL; IndexNO = new int: P1 P2 3 P1 P3
and Rz = ½ r1z r2z r3z  = Ry 3 Rx , these
jP1 P2 3 P1 P3 j ,

Step 1. Traverse all nodes on the triangular mesh three vectors can be regarded as three axes 00 x0 , 00 y0 ,
surface, assign an IndexNO for every node, and and 00 z0 in the local coordinate system.
initialize them to 0. In order to facilitate the subsequent calculations, the
Step 2. Traverse all edges on the triangular mesh local coordinate system should be rewritten in homoge-
surface; if it is empty on the left or right side of the neous2coordinate system 3 form by usage, denoted as
triangle edges, the end points of the edges are named r1x r2x r3x 0
6 r1y r2y r3y 0 7 28
as boundary nodes. The IndexNO of these nodes is R2 = 6 7
4 r1z r2z r3z 0 5. The translation matrix can
marked as 1.
Step 3. Index the nodes directly connecting with the 0 0 0 1
2 3
marked nodes. The IndexNO of these nodes is 1 0 0 x1
marked as 2. 6 0 1 0 y1 7
be denoted as T(  x1 ,  y1 ,  z1 ) = 6
4 0 0 1 z1 5
7
Step 4. Repeatedly execute Step 3 until the IndexNO
of all nodes is updated. 0 0 0 1
Step 5. Calculate the summation of IndexNO for and the translation result is shown in Figure 3(b). The
each triangle. The triangle with the largest total angles between z0 -axis with x-, y-, and z-axis can be
index number is regarded as the center triangle T0. denoted as a, b, and g.
By rotating a certain angle, the two coordinate sys-
As shown in Figure 2, the red triangle is the needed tems lap over each other. The z0 -axis in Figure 3(b) and
center triangle T0. m vector in Figure 3(c) represent an identical oblique
line. Two rotation matrixes can be denoted as R(u) and
R(v)
Coordinate transforming principle
2 3
In order to describe the coordinate transforming princi- cos u sin u 0 0
6  sin u cos u 0 07
ple, a figure is presented as shown in Figure 3. 6 7
R(u) = 6 7,
As shown in Figure 3(a), there is an arbitrary trian- 4 0 0 1 05
gle DP1P2P3 in space rectangular coordinate system 0- 0 0 0 1
xyz and its vertex coordinates are P1(x1, y1, z1), P2(x2, 2 3
cos v 0  sin v 0
y2, z2), and P3(x3, y3, z3), respectively.
6 0 1 0 07
First, an orthogonal matrix 6 7
2 can be preset,
3 denoted R(v) = 6 7
r1x r2x r3x 4 sin v 0 cos v 0 5
as R1 = ½ Rx Ry Rz T = 4 r1y r2y r3y 5. The local 0 0 0 1
r1z r2z r3z
0 0 0 0
coordinate system 0 -x y z can be established by three The combinatorial transformation matrix can be
vertices, as shown in Figure 3(a). Presetting denoted as Y

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Liu et al. 5

Figure 3. The schematic diagram of coordinate transforming: (a) an arbitrary triangle, (b) the triangle after translating, (c) m
vector, and (d) the triangle after rotating.

Y = R(u)  R(v)  T(  x1 ,  y1 ,  z1 ) By utilizing the combinatorial transformation matrix

2 3 Y, an arbitrary triangle in the space would be trans-
cos u cos v sin u  cos u sin v x1
6  sin u cos v cos u  sin u sin v y 7 ð3Þ formed into a specific plane.
6 17
=6 7
4 sin v 0 cos v z1 5
0 0 0 1 Initial flattening method
Comparing Figure 3(b) with Figure 3(c), the direc- In this article, the number of triangle limiting the node
tion cosines of z0 -axis (m vector) are m1 = cos a, transforming would be defined as flattening constraint
m2 = cos b, and m3 = cos g, respectively. degree of the node to reflect the flattening characteristic
Analyzing the Figure 3(c), the following formulas during the flattening process. According to this defini-
can be calculated tion, the flattening constraint degree of the node can be
divided into three situations.
8
> cos v = cos g
< sin v = pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
>
cos2 a cos2 b
p+ ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð4Þ Situation 1. The triangles T and T1 represent the arbi-
>
> cos2 a + cos2 b
cos u = cos a=pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi trary flattened and unflattened triangles in the space
:
sin u = cos b= cos2 a + cos2 b shown in Figure 4(a). The triangles T 0 and T10 are their
corresponding flattening result in the plane shown in
Substituting cos v, sin v, cos u, and sin u into equa- Figure 4(b). The position of node p3 can be determined
tion (7), the final form of combinatorial transformation by the intersection of two circles whose centers and
matrix Y can be presented as follows radii are nodes p1, p2 and r13, r23, respectively, where
2 3 r13 = jP1 P3 j and r23 = jP2 P3 j. It can be found the flat-
cos a cos g cos b
6 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  cos a x1 7 tening constraint degree of node P3 is equal to 1. The
6 cos2 a + cos2 b cos2 a + cos2 b 7 triangle can be flattened without deformation and there
6  cos b cos g cos a 7
6 y1 7
Y = 6 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  cos b 7 is no elastic deformation energy during the flattening
6 cos2 a + cos2 b cos a + cos2 b
2 7
6 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 7 process. For undevelopable surface, this situation rarely
4 cos2 a + cos2 b 0 cos g z1 5
occurs. Therefore, it is very significative to study the sit-
0 0 0 1
uation that the flattening constraint degree of the node
ð5Þ is greater than 1.

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6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

flattened to the plane corresponding to triangles T10 ,

T2 0 , and T3 0 shown in Figure 6(b).
A method to calculate the geometric center p(x, y)
of nonself-intersectant closed polygon is presented.
Hypothetically, the nonself-intersectant closed polygon
has n(n  3) vertices and its area S can be calculated as
follows
1Xn1
S= (xi yi + 1  xi + 1 yi ) ð6Þ
2 i=0
Figure 4. Situation 1 of flattening constraint degree: (a) an
arbitrary triangle and (b) the triangle after flattening. The geometric center p(x, y) of nonself-intersectant
closed polygon can be calculated as follows
8 nP
1
>
> 1
(xi + xi + 1 )(xi yi + 1  xi + 1 yi )
< px = 6S
i=0
nP
1
ð7Þ
>
>
: py = 6S
1
(yi + yi + 1 )(xi yi + 1  xi + 1 yi )
i=0

Although the initial flattening result is quite rough, the

triangular mesh topology has the same geometrical topol-
ogy structure in the space domain and plane domain.

Figure 5. Situation 2 of flattening constraint degree: (a) an
arbitrary triangle and (b) the triangle after flattening.
Situation 2. As shown in Figure 5(a), the flattening con-
straint degree of node P3 is equal to 2. The node P3 can
be transformed into the plane, respectively, in the trian-
gles T1 and T2 under the Situation 1. The two nodes
p03 (x1 , y1 ) and p003 (x2 , y2 ) can be obtained, named as fake-
node, as shown in Figure 5(b). On the basis of these
two fake-nodes, the position of only node p3(x, y) will
be determined, where x = (x1 + x2)/2 and y = (y1 +
y2)/2. Thus, the triangles T1 and T2 can be flattened eas-
ily, denoted as triangles T10 and T20 shown in Figure 5(b).
Under this kind of situation, the triangle would be flat-
tened with deformation, such as the edge stretching or
compressing and also overlaps or cracks come into
being. Meanwhile, there exists the elastic deformation
energy during the flattening process.
Situation 3. Extending to a more general situation
shown in Figure 6(a), the flattening constraint degree
of node P3 is equal to 3. There are three fake-nodes in
Figure 6(b), denoted as p03 (x1 , y1 ), p003 (x2 , y2 ), and
p000
3 (x3 , y3 ). Figure 5(c) shows the partially enlarging pat-
tern of topology relation of these three fake-nodes.
Connecting these three fake-nodes sequentially accord-
ing to the right-hand rule forms a triangle p03 p003 p000
3 . The
geometric center p3(x, y) of this triangle would be
regarded as the only position of node P3 in this article.
Thus, the triangles T1, T2, and T3 in the space can be
Optimizing model
In order to optimize the initial flattening result, a planar
spring–mass model is presented in this section.
The planar spring–mass model can be described as fol-
lows: the nodes and edges of the initial flattening result
can be treated as particles and springs, respectively. Then
the physical quantities of the model correspond to the geo-
metric quantities of graphics, such as the quality of parti-
cles closely correlates with the area of triangle, and the
elastic force is associated with edge difference of triangle
flattening pre and post. The difference is considered to be
a tension or compression for springs in the model.29 As
shown in Figure 7, the particles pi and pj are connected
with springs. If the edge pipj on the planar triangular mesh
is shorter than the corresponding edge on the spatial trian-
gular mesh, it can be assumed that there exists thrust force
between them such as p0 and p1; otherwise, there exists
tension force such as p0 and p5.
Assume that the surface mass is concentrated on
each particle. Thus, the mass mi of particle pi can be
calculated as follows
rX n
mi = Sj ð8Þ
3 j=1
where r is the area density of the surface, Sj is the area
of jth triangle containing the particle pi, and n is the
total number of triangles containing the particle pi.
The resultant force Fi on a single particle pi can be
defined as follows
X
n    
Fi = k pi pj   Pi Pj  Npi pj ð9Þ
j=1

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Liu et al. 7

Figure 6. Situation 3 of flattening constraint degree: (a) an arbitrary triangle, (b) the triangle after flattening, and (c) the drawing of
partial enlargement.

where q€ti is the acceleration of particle pi at time t; q_ ti ,

Figure 7. Planar spring–mass model.
where k is the elastic coefficient, jpi pj j is the current dis-
tance between particles pi and pj on the planar triangu-
lar mesh, jPi Pj j is the distance counterpart on the
spatial triangular mesh, and Npi pj is the unit vector
pointing from pi to pj.
The simplified Lagrange equation can be adopted to
describe the motion process of particles in the model30
M€q + Kq = 0
q_ ti + Dt and qti , qti + Dt are the velocity and position of par-
ticle pi at time t and t + Dt, respectively. It is necessary
to state that the r in equation (8) and the k in equation
(9) are just the weighting factors to make the model
more realistic and their values associate with the mate-
rial properties of sheet metal.
However, by studying equation (11), it can be found
that the velocity of particle pi at time t + Dt is seri-
ously influenced by the velocity at time t. With the
accumulation of velocity and the inertia of the particle
motion, the particle would oscillate at the equilibrium
position, which would bring about divergence for itera-
tive process.
In order to tackle those limitations, the inertia of the
particle can be ignored;32 in other words, the particle
moves at a uniform velocity from time t and t + Dt.
Therefore, equation (11) can be simplified as follows
8
< €qti = Fti =mi
t + Dt
q_ = Dt€qti ð12Þ
: t + Dt t
ð10Þ qi = qi + Dtq_ it + Dt
t

where q is the position of particle, M and K are the In order to measure the error of the flattening result,
mass matrix and stiffness matrix of the spring–mass the classical error measure rules are adopted in this arti-
model, respectively, and Kq is the elastic force defined cle.33 The area error ES and length error EL are defined
in equation (9). as follows
The Euler method can be applied to solve equation 8 P
jS S 0 j
(10).31 When time increment Dt is short enough, the >
< ES = Pi i
acceleration of the particle is regarded as a constant P Si 0 ð13Þ
and then the balance of the whole model will be made >
: EL = PjLi Li j
L i
up of the balance for each single particle. For arbitrary
particle pi, equation (10) can be rewritten as follows where Si and Li are the actual edge length and area
8 of one triangle on the spatial mesh surface, respectively;
> Ft
< €qti = mii Si 0 and Li 0 are the edge length and area of its corre-
q_ t + Dt = q_ ti + Dt€qti ð11Þ sponding triangle on the flattened mesh surface,
>
: tt + Dt Dt2
qi = qti + Dtq_ ti + 2
€qti respectively.

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8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 1. Comparison results.

Example Gaussian Mesh quality Node no. Triangle no. Result ES (%) EL (%)
curvature

A hemisphere flattening 4e24 0.91 690 1272 Initial flattening result 1.532 1.467
Optimizing result 0.463 0.113
A rotational part flattening Max 3.15e24 0.93 834 1462 Initial flattening result 2.874 5.627
Min 26.86e24 Optimizing result 1.365 1.014
A thin sheet flattening Max 0 0.65 548 967 Optimizing result 5.670 9.631
Min 22.53e26 0.95 1365 2368 1.647 2.362

In order to obtain an effective and meaningful flat-

tening result, the following restricted conditions should
be satisfied

E S  eS
ð14Þ
E L  eL

where eS and eL are the tolerance of area error and

length error, respectively.
Because the shape of the triangle is constantly chang-
ing, the mass matrix and the elastic force are also
changing constantly. The iterative process has compli-
cated nonlinear features. The calculation steps are
shown as follows:

Step 1. Preset the time increment Dt, the tolerance of

error eS and eL, and the maximum iterations ei.
Step 2. Calculate the mass mi of each particle and
the resultant force Fi on each single particle.
Step 3. Solve the new physical parameters of parti-
cles through equation (12).
Step 4. Calculate the area error ES and length error
EL through equation (13).
Step 5. If ES  eS , EL  eL or the iterations are
greater than ei, exit the iteration; or go to Step 2.

With the optimizing process completed, the particles

and springs achieve a global stability state and the final Figure 8. Flowchart of the flattening method.
flattening result of the original surface can be obtained.

Flowchart of the flattening method
According to the above description, the proposed flat-
tening method can be coded easily on the computer,
and the flowchart can be summarized as shown in
Figure 8.
Simulation examples and discussion
Based on the above technologies, the flattening system
for sheet metal with free-form surface has been devel-
oped through integration of Microsoft visual studio
2008 and OpenGL. All the examples are executed on a
Core-i5 2.53G PC. The simulation results are shown in
Figures 9–11, and the comparison results are listed in
Table 1.
The flattening results of a hemisphere are shown in
Figure 9. In fact, the hemisphere is a typical undevelop-
able surface and its Gaussian curvature is a constant.
The simulation results show that the flattening quality
can be improved greatly when the planar spring–mass
model is applied. After optimizing, the area error ES
can be reduced from 1.532% to 0.463% and the length
error EL can be reduced from 1.467% to 0.113%.
Obviously, the flattening quality of hemisphere is
improved greatly.
The flattening results of a rotational part are shown
in Figure 10. The rotational part is more complicated

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Liu et al. 9

Figure 9. A hemisphere flattening example: (a) initial free-form surface, (b) Gaussian curvature nephogram, (c) meshed surface, (d)
initial flattening result, and (e) optimizing result.

Figure 10. A rotational part flattening example: (a) initial free-form surface, (b) Gaussian curvature nephogram, (c) meshed surface,
(d) initial flattening result, and (e) optimizing result.

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10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 11. A thin sheet flattening example: (a) initial free-form surface, (b) Gaussian curvature nephogram, (c) mesh quality
D1 = 0.65, (d) optimizing result, (e) mesh quality D1 = 0.95, and (f) optimizing result.

Figure 12. The prototype system interface.

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Liu et al.
than the hemisphere and its Gaussian curvature is not
a constant as shown in Figure 10(b). The target surface
is first meshed with 834 nodes and 1462 triangles,
shown in Figure 10(c). Applying the planar spring–
mass model in the example, the area error ES is reduced
from 2.874% to 1.365% and the length error EL is
reduced from 5.627% to 1.014%.
In order to verify the influence of mesh quality on
the fattening result, a thin sheet flattening example is
provided and the flattening results of a thin sheet are
shown in Figure 11. From the Gaussian curvature
nephogram shown in Figure 11(b), the target surface is
a local undevelopable surface. The surface is divided
into two kinds of meshes in which the quality measur-
ing values of the triangular mesh surface are D1 = 0.65
and D2 = 0.95. Comparison results indicate that the
flattening quality of second kind condition is better
than the first.
The interface of the flattening system for sheet metal
with free-form surface is shown in Figure 12. The sys-
tem mainly has three tool bars: tool bar for flattening,
tool bar for data exchanging, and tool bar for view
transforming module.
Conclusion and future work
A flattening system for sheet metal with free-form sur-
face was designed and implemented to improve the flat-
tening quality of sheet metal. The framework and its
key technologies of the proposed system were elabo-
rated. Finally, three examples were provided and the
proposed system was proved feasible and efficient.
In future studies, the authors plan to investigate
some improvements for the proposed system such as
considering the material property of sheet metal and
establishing a better optimizing model. In addition, the
applications of the proposed system in mechanical engi-
neering are worth further study for the authors.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article: This work was supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No.
BK20151144), Discipline Frontier Research Project (No.
2015XKQY10), and a project funded by the Priority
Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher
Education Institutions
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11
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