The Hydrodroforming Process of an Automotive Part Aminu
Tube hydroforming (THF) is currently an active area of development in the automotive industry on account of its advantages it offers in comparison to other manufacturing processes. In this paper, four simulations were carried out having the same cross sectional area but different axial feeding and load paths to improve the process design in THF process, in order to help establish the feasibility of the THF processes for specific components and have the potential to reduce the number of forming trials required to standardize the process for production of high quality hydroforming components.In addition, the studies also focus on development of an experiment simulation procedures for the entire hydroforming process. The simulation results focus on the % reduction thickness. It has also focus on the axial feed and load paths which becomes an important and useful method for planning the process design analysis, design of forming process and also planning of the tool. Since they play an important role and also determine accordance of forming limits such as wrinkling, bursting and crushing .The geometry model is analyzed base on different axial load and load paths. The key issues include geometry modeling, materials selection, meshing, boundary conditions, load definition and contact between the tube and the dies.On the base of the simulation, an optimized process parameter combination has obtained and has been verified by the instrument panel frame hydroforming experiment. The works show that:
A study of forming pressure in the tube-hydroforming process
Abstract The forming pressure required to produce a desired part using the tube-hydroforming process was investigated in the present study. The relationship between hydraulic pressure, outer corner radius of the deformed tube, tube thickness and tube yield stress was established based on a proposed theoretical model. In the theoretical model, the material hardening property was taken into consideration. Since the friction in the tube-hydroforming is smaller than that in the conventional stamping process, the die-closing force was also calculated according to the forming pressure predicted by the proposed theoretical model under frictionless condition. The finite element analysis was performed to validate the proposed theoretical model. In order to confirm the accuracy of the finite element simulations, two different finite element codes were employed to conduct the analysis and the simulation results were compared. The predicted values calculated by the proposed theoretical model were found to agree well with those obtained from the finite element simulation results.
The Forming of Axisymmetric and Asymmetric Components From Tube
A hydraulic tube-forming machine has been designed and manufactured to investigate the cold forming of axisymmetric and asymmetric components from circular tube. Radial expansions of 50 per cent have been achieved with axisymmetric components, and tee-pieces have been successfully formed in a wide range of materials.