Manufacture and Analysis of Hydroforming Process for an Automobile Lower Arm by FEM

유한요소법에 의한 자동차 로어암의 하이드로포밍 성형 해석 및 제작

An automobile lower arm has been fabricated in a prototype form by hydroforming with the aids of numerical analysis and experiments. For the numerical process design, a program called HydroFORM-3D developed here on the basis of a rigid-plastic model, has been applied to the lower arm hydroforming. The friction calculation between die and workpiece has been dealt carefully by introducing a new scheme in three-dimensional surface integration. To accomplish successful hydroforming process design, thorough investigation on proper combination of process parameters such as internal hydraulic pressure, axial feeding, and tool geometry has been performed. Results obtained from numerical simulation for a lower arm in hydroforming process are compared with a series of experiments. The comparison shows that the numerical analysis successfully provides the manufacturing information on the lower arm hydroforming, and it predicts the geometrical deformation and the thinning.