Smart structures assembly through incremental forming

Smart structures are becoming more and more important in the transport and building sectors. Today, the components of the structures 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.