Design, Numerical and Experimental Testing of a Flexible Test Bench for High-Speed Impact Shear-Cutting with Linear Motors

Given the use of high-strength steels to achieve lightweight construction goals, conventional shear-cutting processes are reaching their limits. Therefore, so-called high-speed impact cutting (HSIC) is used to achieve the required cut surface qualities. A new machine concept consisting of linear motors and an impact mass is presented to investigate HSIC. It allows all relevant parameters to be flexibly adjusted and measured. The design and construction of the test bench, as well as the mechanism for coupling the impact mass, are described. To validate the theoretically determined process speeds, the cutting process was recorded with high-speed cameras, and HSIC with a mild deep-drawing steel sheet was performed. It was discovered that very good cutting edges could be produced, which showed a significantly lower hardening depth than slowly cut reference samples. In addition, HSIC was numerically modelled in LS-DYNA, and the calculated cutting edges were compared with the real ones. With the help of adaptive meshing, a very good agreement for the cutting edges could be achieved. The results show the great potential of using a linear motor in HSIC.