Design and Analysis of Infrared Heating with Overlapping Heater Array Scheme for Industrial Application

A recently developed infrared (IR) local heating method is fairly effective to reduce springback of advanced high strength steel in manufacturing processes of car chassis. Although parabolic heaters, consisting of an IR lamp located on the focus of a parabolic reflector, can reduce springback in stamping processes, non-negligible temperature changes are generated in the heated area. For this reason, an improved heater has been required for the IR heating method. In this work, an overlapping heater array is designed to solve the problem of the parabolic heater for the IR local heating method. The overlapping heater array can reduce the temperature change in the heated area. In the overlapping heater array, the parabolic heaters are connected in series. The connected parabolic heaters are then placed on both sides of a thin sheet metal and intersected to reduce the temperature change. In order to design a more efficient overlapping heater array, a simple design parameter was employed. The numerical and experimental verifications have shown that the overlapping heater array drastically reduces the temperature change in the heated area.