Abstract

The V-bending process has become one of the most common and widely adopted techniques in sheet metal manufacturing. However, achieving precise and consistent bending angles remains a significant challenge in practice. Each material has unique mechanical characteristics, leading to a wide range of research opportunities and numerous cases that need to be studied. Among the most critical challenges is the spring-back effect, which is difficult to control uniformly but can still be estimated based on experimental conditions. Air V-bending is widely used in the industry due to its compatibility with numerical control systems, which facilitates easy adjustment of parameters and precise control over punch displacement to minimize the spring-back effect. This flexibility makes it particularly suitable for a broad range of industrial applications involving various material types and thicknesses. This research investigates the main parameters of the air V-bending process, namely die radius, material thickness, and bending angle, under the influence of spring-back effects. Two common die angles — 28° and 85° — were selected to represent a range of practical operating conditions. The study focuses on SUS304 stainless steel, a material widely used across various industrial applications due to its excellent corrosion resistance and mechanical properties. The virtual experiments conducted in this study use simulation methods, offering notable advantages in terms of cost reduction and ease of parameter adjustment, allowing for efficient exploration of a wide variety of cases. The design of experiments was carefully considered to ensure systematic and reliable evaluation of each parameter's influence. The results indicate that the spring-back of SUS304 in air V-bending is most significantly affected by the bending angle, followed by material thickness, with the die angle being the least influential factor among those examined. These findings offer valuable practical guidance for engineers aiming to improve dimensional accuracy in sheet metal forming operations.