Precision guided flexible forming: closed-loop control of geometry and properties for high value metal component manufacture

制造只涉及三种类型的过程-添加、更换或移除材料。“金属敲击”--改变金属部件的形状，而无需移除或添加--很容易被忽视，甚至被嘲笑为制造技术中的“丑小鸭”，但它仍然是英国制造业的核心，而且永远是：喷气发动机、医疗扫描仪、汽车、高层办公室和现代工业设备都依赖于金属成形，既定义了部件的几何形状，也创造了决定产品性能的强度和韧性等特性。尽管3D打印等添加剂工艺让人兴奋不已，但金属成形永远不会被取代，因为钢、锻铝和其他关键金属的高性能只能通过仔细控制变形和温度来实现。在全球范围内，我们使用的钢材是任何其他金属的25倍-在英国，我们的消费推动了每人每年500公斤的钢材生产-每种钢铁产品都经过了几种金属成形工艺的塑造。因此，不可避免的是，金属成形工艺是英国三分之一制造业出口产品的生产核心，这些产品的总价值超过750亿GB。然而，金属零件成形所需的工具是为每个应用定制的，成本很高，因此除非用于大规模生产，否则金属成形通常是昂贵的，但未来高价值英国制造业的发展需要更高的灵活性和更小的批量，而不牺牲金属零件的精度和性能。在过去的20年里，世界各地的几个研究实验室响应了这一挑战，探索设计和开发新型柔性金属成形设备。然而，由于缺乏精确度和无法保证产品的微观结构和性能，这些工艺在很大程度上未能从实验室进入工业用途。传感器、执行器、控制理论和数学模型方面的最新发展表明，这两个问题都有可能通过使用闭环控制来克服，在导致这一提议的工作中，我们首次展示了在柔性板材成形过程中在线使用立体视觉摄像机来提供精确控制板材最终形状所需的反馈。这向我们表明，成形的闭环控制是可能的和有价值的，但涉及到产品质量、工艺灵活性和生产速度之间的权衡。因此，这项建议结合了四个以前在柔性成形领域没有联系的学科来探索这种权衡，并发展支撑未来商业价值柔性金属成形设备发展的关键知识：新型设备的机械设计；时间和空间的控制工程；金属成形的材料科学；快速数学过程建模。我们建议的核心是将设计、冶金和建模与控制工程联系起来的雄心，以确定开发和应用柔性成形的机会，并在四个重点突出的案例研究中证明这一点。该提案提供了120万GB的资金，包括支持5名博士生在该项目中工作，以及西门子金属技术公司、Firth Rixson和捷豹路虎承诺的大量时间和试验。这项工作的成果将通过出版物、示范、为工业界和学术界开发人员举办的讲习班以及一本编辑过的书籍来传达。

Manufacturing involves only three types of processes - adding, changing or removing material. 'Metal Bashing' - changing the shape of metal components without removal or additions - is easily over-looked or even derided as the 'ugly duckling' of manufacturing technology, yet continues to be central to UK manufacturing, and always will be: jet engines, medical scanners, cars, high-rise offices and contemporary industrial equipment all depend on metal forming, both to define component geometries and to create the properties such as strength and toughness which determine product performance. Despite great excitement over additive processes such as 3D printing, metal forming will never be replaced, because the high-performance properties of steel, wrought aluminium and other key metals can only be developed as a result of careful control of deformation and temperature over time. Globally we use 25 times more steel than any other metal - in the UK our consumption drives production of 500kg of steel per person per year - and every steel product has been shaped by several metal forming processes. Inevitably, metal forming processes are therefore central to the production of a third of all manufactured exports from the UK which are in total worth over £75bn. However, the tools required for forming metal components are custom-made for each application at great cost, so metal forming is often expensive unless used in mass production, yet the drivers for development of future high-value UK manufacturing require increased flexibility and smaller batch sizes without sacrificing either the accuracy or properties of metal parts.In the past twenty years, several research labs around the world have responded to this challenge and explored the design and development of novel flexible metal forming equipment. However these processes have largely failed to move from the lab into industrial use, due to a lack of precision and a failure to guarantee product microstructure and properties. Recent developments in sensors, actuators, control theory and mathematical modelling suggest that both problems could potentially be overcome by use of closed-loop control, and in work leading to this proposal, we have demonstrated the first online use of a stereo-vision camera in a flexible sheet metal forming process to provide the feedback needed to control the final shape of the sheet precisely. This has shown us that closed-loop control of forming is possible and valuable, but involves a trade-off between product quality, process flexibility and production speed.This proposal therefore brings together four disciplines, previously un-connected in the area of flexible forming, to explore this trade-off and develop the key knowledge underpinning future development of commercially valuable flexible metal forming equipment: mechanical design of novel equipment; control-engineering in both time and space; materials science of metal forming; fast mathematical process modelling. At the heart of our proposal is the ambition to link design, metallurgy and modelling to control engineering, in order to identify the opportunity for developing and applying flexible forming, and to demonstrate it in practice in four well focused case-studies. The proposal comes with £1.2m gearing, including support for five PhD students to work within the project, and substantial commitments of time and trials from Siemens Metals Technologies, Firth Rixson and Jaguar Land Rover. The outcomes of the work will be communicated through publications, demonstrations, workshops for both industry and academic developers, and through an edited book.