Integration of Smart Materials by Incremental Forming

Today, the components of smart structures consisting of structural and smart materials are generally produced separately and assembled in additional processes afterwards. An alternative approach, which combines the forming of metallic parts and the assembly of the structures in one process step, is proposed in this paper. Incremental forming processes are applied for this operation. Significant joining mechanisms will be analyzed and some applications of this combined forming and assembly process are shown. As sensors, smart components allow a monitoring of appearing loads, as actuators they allow an active influencing on appearing disturbances. The research contains numerical analyses and experimental tests.