To provide a system and a method for thermal forming capable of geometry tuning.
A method for thermal forming includes determining a process window for initiating cooling, locally heating at least one region (22) on a specimen (20) to achieve a pre-selected geometry deformation, initiating active cooling of the heated region within the process window to control at least one material property of the specimen at the heated region and actively cooling the heated region to a pre-selected temperature. A system (10) for thermal forming includes a thermal source (12) for heating the region on the specimen to achieve a pre-selected geometry deformation, an active cooling module (14) for cooling the region to a pre-selected temperature and a control module (16) to control at least one of the thermal source and active cooling module in accordance with a process window to initiate active cooling to control at least one material property of the specimen at the heated region. The process window has an upper time limit for initiating cooling.
MARTE JUDSON SLOANE
MIKA DAVID P
GRAHAM MICHAEL E
JONES MARSHALL G
FARRELL BRIAN H
Hirokazu Ogura
Toshihisa Kurokawa
Arakawa Satoshi
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