Experiment investigation on rules of laser tube bending

In this paper the mechanism of the laser bending of tube parts is elaborated.And the bending rules are obtained through the experiment.Laser tube bending is a flexible forming process by which metal tube can be bent without external force.It is generally known that laser bending of tubes is achieved through upsetting mechanism.The scanned region of the tube is heated almost homogeneously in the thickness direction,and undergoes compressive plastic deformation and wall thickening due to restriction on thermal expansion by the surrounding material.The major problem in the study of laser bending is to understand the temperature and stress-strain distribution at different process parameters and scanning paths.The process parameters influencing the laser bending parts of tube mainly include laser power,scanning angle and numbers,facular diameter and scanning speed.With the help of the experiment the respective influence of the five process parameters on the bending angle is studied. Within the range of some fixed value given,the bending angle can be increased by the following means:increasing the laser power,scanning angle and scanning numbers and decreasing the scanning speed.