The superplastic forming process is used to fabricate parts with complex geometry for both commercial and military aircraft. Elimination of fasteners and reduction of part count, assembly time and weight can be realized with the superplastic forming process, but tool design and forming process development costs and schedule must be minimized. Boeing has developed and used computer analysis and simulation software to help design tooling and develop the forming process. Within the Integrated Product Team (IPT) environment at Boeing, analysis is leveraged with tool design and manufacturing experience to reduce the tooling design and process development time. The capability to predict final part thickness within 5% allows tooling designs to be developed and weight and performance to be predicted early in the design cycle. Examples show the predicted improvement in part thickness uniformity caused by tool design, preforming and forming process control. These tooling concepts and forming processes were used to fabricate production parts. A comparison between predicted and measured thickness was excellent for both distribution of thickness and absolute thickness.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Superplastic Forming Analysis for Tool Design and Process Development


    Additional title:

    Sae Technical Papers


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    SAE Aerospace Manufacturing Technology Conference & Exposition ; 1997



    Publication date :

    1997-06-03




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




    Superplastic Forming Analysis for Tool Design and Process Development

    Young, G. K. / Firth, L. / Glenn, G. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997


    Superplastic Forming - Analysis and Experiment

    Hong, S. S. / Lee, S. H. / Lee, J. S. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993



    Superplastic forming of aluminum

    Naser,D.M. | Automotive engineering | 1987


    Process Simulation of Superplastic Forming of Titanium Structure

    Marriott, Adam / Pridham, Barry / Ginty, Brian | SAE Technical Papers | 2001