Controlling Edge Effects in Laser Bending

Laser forming of sheet metal offers the advantages of requiring no hard tooling, no spring back and no external force. Thus this technology reduces cost, increases flexibility and accuracy. Laser forming is a complicated and transient thermo-mechanical process involving elastic and plastic strain dependent on time history. How to control and enhance the accuracy of the laser forming attracts much attention. This paper put forward a new strategy to control and reduce the edge effects in laser forming. Numerical simulations and experiments were also carried out to validate the presented strategy.