Electromagnetic pulse forming

It is well known that velocity effects offer significant technological and economic advantages in production technologies and specifically in sheet metal forming. These advantages can be exploited, e.g., by using electromagnetic forming, a high-speed forming technology using the energy density of pulsed magnetic fields in order to process tubular or sheet metal workpieces made of an electrically highly-conductive material. Major process variants are the compression or expansion of tubular materials as well as the forming of flat or preformed sheet metal parts. In the chapter the process principle of electromagnetic forming is described and some important conclusions regarding tooling are explained, information about the analytical and numerical calculation of the process is given, advantages and limits of the technology are summarized and applications in the field of shaping, joining and cutting are presented. An outlook discusses the current status of the process implementation in industrial manufacturing and the future prospects.