Sheet metal-forming processes such as stamping, deep drawing, bending, shearing, hydroforming, hydromechanical deep drawing, rubber forming, and incremental forming have been widely used in the automotive, aircraft, and ship-building industries. With the expansion of the automotive industry, research on these processes has been remarkably developed in Korea since the 1980s. Here, we review the history of this research as well as recent trends in sheet metal-forming processes. This overview focuses specifically on the results of research in Korea and on the works of Professor D.Y. Yang, in honor of his retirement.

Solid state joining techniques are increasingly applied in a wide range of industrial applications. Friction welding is a solid state welding technique that is used to join similar or dissimilar materials. In this study, friction welding was applied to rotor shaft composed of a disk and a shaft. The disk and shaft were manufactured by hot forging and rolling, respectively. The aim of the study was to predict the structural characteristics during hot forging and friction welding process for rotor shaft of turbo charger. The structural characteristics were determined by heat input and heat affected zone (HAZ) during a short cycle time. Thus, transient FE analysis for hot forging and friction welding was based on heat transfer. The results were used to predict structural characteristics during hot forging and friction welding processes. The prototype of rotor shaft was manufactured by the result-based process parameters.

Recently, many studies have been conducted on the nano-scale fabrication technology using twophoton-absorbed polymerization induced by a femtosecond laser. The nano-stereolithography process has many advantages as a technique for direct fabrication of true three-dimensional shapes in the range over several microns with sub-100 nm resolution, which might be difficult to obtain by using general nano/microscale fabrication technologies. Therefore, two-photon induced nano-stereolithography has been recently recognized as a promising candidate technology to fabricate arbitrary 3D structures with sub-100 nm resolution. Many research works for fabricating novel 3D nano/micro devices using the two-photon nano-stereolithography process, which can be utilized in the NT/BT/IT fields, are rapidly advancing.

For a stable electric power supply in the space, nuclear batteries have been used as the main power source in a spacecraft owing to their long lifetime and high reliability. In accordance with the plan for lunar mission in Korea, nuclear batteries will supply electricity to the rover that needs to be developed. According to the information about the estimated payload, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute started with the conceptual design based on the previous studies in USA and Russia. Because a nuclear battery converts the decay heat of the radioisotope into electricity, thermal design, radiation shield, and shock protection need to be considered. In this study, two types of nuclear batteries, radial type and axial type, were designed according to the alignment of the thermoelectric module. Heat transfer analyses were performed to compare their thermoelectric efficiency, and test mockups were fabricated to evaluate their performances.

To enhance the safety of nuclear reactors after the Fukushima accident, researchers are developing various types of accident tolerant fuel (ATF) to increase the coping time and reduce the generation of hydrogen by oxidation. Coated cladding, an ATF concept, can be a promising technology in view of its commercialization. We applied 3D printing technology to the fabrication of coated cladding as well as of coated pellets. Direct metal tooling (DMT) in 3D printing technologies can create a coated layer on the tubular cladding surface, which maintains stability during corrosion, creep, and wear in the reactor. A 3D laser coating apparatus was built, and parameter studies were carried out. To coat pellets with erbium using this apparatus, we undertook preliminary experiments involving metal pellets. The adhesion test showed that the coated layer can be maintained at near fracture strength.

A monobloc tubular drive shaft is designed to obtain the improved structural safety and the weight reduction of the drive shaft together. The monobloc tubular drive shaft can be manufactured from an incremental hot rotary forging process. The aim of this study was to experimentally determine conditions of an incremental hot rotary forging process for a monobloc tubular drive shaft. Induction heating experiments were performed to estimate a proper heating time of an initial workpiece in an induction heating process. Several incremental hot rotary forging experiments were carried out using a mechanical press with the designed set-up. The step distance and the step angle were chosen as controllable forming parameters. Based on the results of the experiments, the influence of forming parameters on the quality of the forged part was investigated. Finally, a forming map and a proper forming condition of the incremental hot rotary forging process were estimated.

The out-of-squareness is one of the error sources that affect the positioning accuracy of machine tools and coordinate measuring machines. Laser interferometer is widely used to measure the position and angular errors, and can measure the squareness using an optical square. However, the squareness measurement using the laser interferometer is difficult, as compared to other errors due to complicated optics setup and Abbe’s error occurrence. The effect of out-of squareness mainly appears at the face-diagonal of the movable plane. The diagonal displacements are also affected by the position dependent geometric errors. In this study, the squareness estimation techniques via diagonal displacement measurement using the laser interferometer without an optical square were proposed. For accurate estimation and measurement time reduction, the errors selected from proposed discriminant were measured. Discrepancy between the proposed technique with the laser interferometer (with an optical square) result was 0.6 μrad.

The fiber optical temperature sensing device was developed by using a Fiber Bragg Grading (FBG) sensor and a linear transmittance optical filter. The temperature change causes change in the FBG sensor reflectance wavelength and the reflectance wavelength from FBG sensor is transmitted to a linear transmittance filter so that the optical signal value is determined by the wavelength. The temperature can be measured by the optical signal value by passing FBG reflectance wavelength to the linear transmittance filter. Using the developed system, temperature ranges from 10℃ to 50℃ were measured and the measured data were almost linear.

In this study, we described the design of a three-axis force/torque sensor for measuring the force and torque in a lower-limb rehabilitation robot. The three-axis force/torque sensor is composed of Fx force sensor, Fz force sensor and Tz torque sensor. The sensing element for Fx force sensor and Tz torque sensor is used in a two-step parallel plate beam, and that of Fz force sensor is used in a parallel plate beam. The rated loads of Fx force sensor, Tz torque sensor and Fz force sensor are 300 N, 15 N m and 100 N, respectively. The three-axis force/torque sensor was designed using the finite element method, and manufactured using strain-gauges. The three-axis force sensor was further characterized. As a result, the interference error of the three-axis force/torque sensor was < 1.24%, the repeatability error of each sensor was < 0.03%, and the non-linearity was < 0.02%.

Stress tests were conducted in the carbody of the railroad car to check the structural strength of the body of the railroad car. The objective of this study was to evaluate safety of the carbody of a railroad car under the maximal strength. The carbody of rolling stock is a principal structure that supports major equipment of the underframe and the freight. Therefore, the strength evaluation of this structure is important. This study was carried out to analyze the structure of carbody and evaluate safety under maximum vertical load, compressive load, and torsional load. Accordingly, stress tests were conducted on the carbody to measure the stress on each of their parts. Before the load test, a structural-analysis program was used for the stress distribution analysis of the body structure.