4. CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
The content of this paper has been focussed on the modelling aspects of heat and deformation
phenomena related to metal bending forming by localized laser heating.
The contents of this paper should be regarded as the conceptual background of applications to
problems in technology to be dcvcloped by suitable computational simulations related to the de- 1136 G. PALAZZO AND m. PASQUINO
velopment of experiments. Preliminary simulations have been developed by generalized collocation
[19,20], and spectral [21] methods. The qualitative behavior is the one consistent with the
the phenomenology of the system: heat waves are generated so that the heating of the material
is localized in space. It appears particularly important taking into account the variation of the
diffusion coefficient with temperature.
However, it is worth stressing that the technical evaluation of the constant s depends not only on
the geometrical and mechanical parameters, but also on the phenomenological parameter # which
needs to be identified by comparisons between simulations and experimental measurements. It is
a necessary step which cannot be hidden considering that the hyperbolic behavior of the heating
process plays a crucial role. On the other hand, the simplicity of the heat process model allows
to develop a very simple identification procedure which may be developed even for problems
in one space dimensions. Technically the result is achieved by comparisons of theoretical and
experimental data for an initial boundary value problems with sharp heating at the boundary [22].
This research perspective is in progress again based on the above computational methods.