Forming Limit Diagram of an Aluminum Tube Through Hydroforming Tests

A tube hydroformability testing system was designed and fabricated enabling to apply the forming condition along arbitrarily pre-programmed internal pressure-axial feed path. The free-bulging and T-forming tests were carried out on the extruded aluminum (A6063) tube specimens with 40.6 mm outer diameter and 2.25 mm thickness. Nine different combinations of internal pressure and axial feed, yielding different strain paths from one another, were taken into consideration in order to induce bursting at various deformation modes. Major and minor strains were automatically measured from deformed grids around the fracture using a stereo-vision-based surface strain measurement system, named ASIAS. The forming limit diagram of the A6063 tube material was successfully obtained. Most of the data points acquired from free bulging and T-forming tests appeared in the range of negative minor strain on the FLD and are mostly located near the strain paths calculated from explicit finite element simulations. The forming limit obtained from tests after pre-tension was considerably lower than that from tests without pre-tension, which showed the strain path-dependency of the forming limit as well known in the sheet forming fold.

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