En profil

“Corrugated facade sheets as solid styling device”. Metal corrugated sheeting is preferred facade cladding because of its solid structure and industrial appeal. Corrugated material enables limited sheet thickness making for lightweight elements. The well-known sheet piling having long transcended its building site existence is now used in the construction of office buildings and homes. Appeal is determined by degree of corrugation and acuteness of angle, which determines shadow effects.

Corrugated facade sheeting comes in many shapes and forms. The best known one, sheet piling, is a rolled steel or aluminum sheet with its limitations. Corrugation is always linear, corners are difficult to align, rigidity is not three-dimensional, and fastenings are visible. Three dimensional shapes are feasible; taken from a standard sheet, the fitted pieces are hand cut and shaped. Below a review of rolling technology possibilities for corrugated metal sheeting that lacks abovementioned limitatio

Deep Pressurizing
This technology shaping the sheet in a mold under extreme pressure is called deep pressurizing. Dimensions are subject to the press used. These presses are common in the automotive and ship-building industries. Corrugation depth depends on thickness of the sheet (steel or aluminum). The sheet being shaped cold, stress variations may occur so that the sheet does not retain its shape.

Rubber Pressurizing
Rubber pressurizing involves bending the sheet over a single tool by pressing it into a block of hard rubber at 930 bar. Under this extreme pressure the rubber behaves as a fluid so that it bends the edges of the sheet against the tool. This is pure bending, so allow for rebound. Several products can be pressed in several molds. This technology has its origins in the aerospace industry in the Netherlands and its limitation is that, assuming equal sheet thickness, corrugation when large size sheets are shaped is not as deep as with other technologies. This technology can be applied to steel, stainless steel, aluminum and titanium.

Super Plastic Forming
Super plastic forming is a heat process whereby an aluminum sheet of a specific alloy is vacuum drawn at a high temperature (350 – 500 degrees Celsius) over or in a mold. The sheet melting into the mold creates stress-less corrugations of even thickness resulting in lightweight elements. This technology enables quire extensive reshaping.

Extrusion
Aluminum extrusion products in corrugated form are known as line-shape elements; for relatively small reshaping purposes, an extrusion press can handle 200 to 590 mm wide sheets. Sheet thickness is approximately 2 mm.
Corrugation can be comb shaped, ribbed, stepped, or wave shaped and in various dimensions. The resultant sheets display very clean lines, fastenings are not visible since the fastening sections are extruded onto the back in the same process. This system (by Profil Design) is patent protected.