Monitoring of fluctuating material properties for optimizing sheet-metal forming processes: a systematic literature review

Material properties can vary both along a sheet-metal coil and from coil to coil despite tight tolerances influencing the process stability of sheet-metal processes and the part quality, which leads to rejects and machine downtime [1]. This significantly affect the economic efficiency of the process. Monitoring fluctuations in material characteristics at regular intervals along sheet-metal coils is enabled directly by non-destructive testing (NDT) before the process offering conclusions on the material properties. Another material monitoring technique arises from monitoring process conditions of the upstream processes, e.g., cold rolling, leading indirectly to insights on material properties. In this work, a systematic literature review (SLR) [2] is conducted to investigate recent approaches for material monitoring and for the utilization of resulting material data for optimizing different sheet-metal forming processes. Existing approaches for different sheet-metal forming processes are critically appraised. Based on the SLR research gaps are revealed and research opportunities, e.g., arising from a potential transfer of existing solutions between different forming processes and recent advances in data-driven methods, are identified.