Incremental rolling forming process to fabricate surface micro-grooves

The fabrication of functional micro-structures at sheet surface has a wide range of applications in noise reduction, friction reduction, heat and mass transfer, etc. By integrating the conventional rolling forming and the incremental sheet forming process, a flexible and widely applicable incremental rolling forming process was proposed in the present work to fabricate surface micro-grooves. First, a rolling tool which has hemispherical ring convex on the roller and the convex height is much higher than the height of forming groove was designed and manufactured. Then, a series of incremental rolling tests on titanium alloy (TA1) were carried out by using self-designed rolling tools, with varying roller size, rolling depth and feed rate. The results show that continuous micro-grooves with good dimensional consistency were prepared on the surface of the plate. Furthermore, by investigating rolling force and groove size after rolling, it was found that the rolling depth have significant effects on the micro-groove formation and only localized material flow is occurred at the grooved region. Compared with the traditional rolling process, the incremental rolling process has the advantages of low rolling force and adjustable groove spacing, which is conducive to the subsequent processing of the sheet.