| Summary: | The processing of materials has become a specialist field and the industry will continue to grow due to rising costs in labour and raw materials which has forced many automotive industry suppliers to invest heavily in this field. In order to be relevant and competitive in today’s industrial world, companies in South Africa are now forced to dedicate billions of rands in profits to research and development. Metals like titanium are finding favour with automotive and aviation companies in pursuit of savings in fuel consumption. This saving is achieved by reducing weight on aircraft and automobiles yet still meeting acceptable and improved structural integrity. In-depth research into the behaviour of various materials under varying loading conditions is therefore essential. The study on the processing of commercially pure grade 2 titanium alloy plates focuses on the development of process parameters for bending the material using a 4kW Nd: YAG laser to an approximate radius of curvature of 120mm. The resulting mechanical properties of laser formed plates are then compared to those obtained from mechanically formed samples. The titanium parent material was used to benchmark the performance of formed samples. The effect of process parameters on the mechanical properties and structural integrity also formed part of this study. To obtain the bending parameters for laser forming, various combinations of processing speeds and laser powers were used. The line energy is dependent on the power and scanning velocity parameters and these are shown in table 1. The laser power, line energy and scanning velocity were the main parameters controlled in this study and the beam diameter remained unchanged. Residual stress analysis, micro-hardness and fatigue life testing were carried out to analyse mechanical properties and the structural integrity of the plate samples. Microstructural analysis was also done to observe changes in the material as a result of the forming processes. From the results it is evident that laser forming is beneficial to the hardness of titanium but detrimental to the fatigue life at higher line energies. Residual stress analysis showed the amount of stress within the study samples increased with each forming operation. This information was vital in the analysis of the fatigue life of titanium. A fatigue life prediction model was developed from this study and it shed some light on the behaviour of titanium in fatigue testing. The model could be used to predict fatigue life when no fatigue data is available for commercially pure grade 2 titanium alloy plates. In conclusion, this study helped establish parameters that could be used to bend titanium while the analysis of mechanical properties showed the limits of working with this alloy.
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