Laser bending of thin stainless steel sheets

In this article, a low power Nd:YAG laser is used to study the bending behavior of thin AISI 304 stainless steel sheets. It is observed that the bending angle decreases significantly with increasing material thickness, and that there exists a threshold heat input, below which no bending occurs. On the other hand, when the heat input is greater than a critical value, bending angle no longer increases with increasing heat input. A two-dimensional laser bending model is also developed to explain the deformation behavior. The trends of the predictions are in reasonable agreement with the experimental findings. These results are found to be significant in better understanding the deformation behavior of thin metal sheets in laser forming, and providing a basis for further investigation on laser forming of microdevices.