• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.24 no.B
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• pp.199-206
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• 2004

Recently social demands of fuel economy and environmental regulations require the development of lightweight components and new manufacturing technologies. The aluminum tube hydroforming is a manufacturing process which can provide lightweight components as automotive parts. In this paper, the hydroformability of aluminium tube in different condition of bending process is presented. An investigation has been conducted on how to control the deformed shape and its effect on thinning distribution after hydroforming by using finite element simulation. Finite element simulation of tube hydroforming for automotive trailing arm is carried out to explore the effect of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional bending.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.142-147
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• 2004

The aluminum tube hydroforming is a manufacturing process which can provide lightweight components as automotive parts. In this paper, the hydroformability of aluminium tube in different condition of bending process is presented. An investigation has been conducted on how to control the deformed shape and its effect on thinning distribution after hydroforming by using finite element simulation. Finite element simulation of tube hydroforming for automotive trailing arm is carried out to explore the effect of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional bending.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.314-317
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• 2007

Automotive rear subframe of aluminum tube was developed by using hydroforming process, based on the numerical analysis and physical tryouts. In the previous study, the effect of prebending was evaluated on the basis of forming limit diagram which had been obtained from free bulging, T-shape forming and cross-shape forming, using the developed tube hydroformability testing system. In order to get the sound products, appropriate internal pressure is to be imposed corresponding to the axial feeding. In this study, the loading path, the combination of internal pressure and axial feeding during the process, was optimized to ensure minimum thickness variation and dimensional accuracy, by using response surface method.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 2013

Tube hydroforming is a technology that utilizes hydraulic pressure to form a tube into desired shapes inside die cavities. Due to its advantages, such as weight reduction, increased strength, improved quality, and reduced tooling cost, single-layered tube hydroforming is widely used in industry. However in some special applications, it is necessary to produce multi-layered tubular components which have corrosion resistance, thermal resistance, conductivity, and abrasion resistance. In this study, a hollow forming process to fabricate a part from multi-layered tubes for structural purposes is proposed. To accomplish a successful hydroforming process, an analytical model that predicts optimal load path for various parameters such as tube material properties, thickness of tubes, diameter of holes and the number of holes was developed. Tubular hydroforming experiments to fabricate a hollow part were performed and the optimal loading path developed by the analytical model was successfully verified. The results show that the proposed hydroforming process can effectively produce hollow parts with multi-layered tube without defects such as wrinkling or fracture.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1810-1815
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• 2003

Tube hydroforming provides a number of advantages over conventional stamping process, including fewer secondary operation, weight reduction, assembly simplification, adaptability to forming of complex structural components and improved structural strength and stiffness. In this study, the effect of the heat treatment on the hydro-formability has been investigated. By using the mild steel tube bulging test is performed at various heat treatment conditions to evaluate the hydro-formability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.93-98
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• 2006

Warm forming technology was classified into hot gas forming of using compressible fluid as a nitrogen gas and warm hydroforming of using the incompressible fluid as a thermal oil by using medium fluid. In this study, the aluminum side-rail part was developed with warm hydroforming technology. For the warm hydroforming system, top and bottom die was designed to insert heating cartridge in die cavity and special indirect fluid heating system was designed to heat the thermal oil. As increase the temperature, hydroformability was increased linearly. Aluminum side-rail center part was formed 90% at the internal pressure of 100bar and perfectly formed at 300bar within a moderate temperature. The tube material used for warm hydroforming was a aluminum 6000 series alloy with the diameter of 120mm, thickness of 5mm, length of 1,300mm. Warm hydroformed side-rail center part had 20% of maximum expansion ratio and below 20% of maximum thinning ratio at corner radius. This results were provided to show warm hydroforming possibility for aluminum automotive components.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.253-257
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• 2005

A tube hydroformability testing system was designed and fabricated so as to observe the forming process and to apply forming condition along arbitrarily pre-programmed internal pressure-axial feed path. The forming limit diagram of A6063 extruded tube, of 40.6 mm outer diameter and 2.25 mm thickness, was successfully obtained through free bulging and T-forming tests except the region of high positive minor strain. It is found that the data points marked on the FLD are mostly located near the strain paths from the finite element analysis excluding the cases of large axial feed. There exist data points even in the area beyond the uniaxial tension mode, since the reduction in thickness decreases due to the axial feed. The forming limit from T-forming test was considerably lower than that from free bulge test. It seems because the deformation is localized at the pole.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.54-60
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• 2002

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the effect of Process parameters such as internal pressure, amount of axial feeding, and frictional condition between the die and the material on the tube hydro-formability. For carbon steel tubes(STKM 12A, STBH 410 and SPS 290), simple bulging, circular bulging and Tee-fitting tests are performed to evaluate the hydro-formability of these materials which is determined by deformation characteristics such as thickness distribution, forming height and branch dome shape. The formabilities obtained from these tests are analysed and compared with the results of the numerical simulation.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.368-374
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• 2015

Hydroforming of a non-axisymmetric thin-walled tubular component with variable cross sections was analyzed. In order to solve the sealing problem which occurred due to the thin and non-axisymmetric shape, the use of a lead patch on the punch, which had been successful in hydroforming of thin tubes, was evaluated. A lead patch was attached to the punch to solve the sealing problem, which was caused by the stress gradient in the non-axisymmetric shape. FEM and experiments were also performed to analyze these sealing problems associated with the punch shape and non-axisymmetric shape. Finally, the lead patch was attached at tube surface where intensive local strain concentration would occur to enhance the hydroformability. These methods were successfully used to fabricate non-axisymmetric thin-walled tubular component with variable cross sections that had previously failed during traditional hydroforming.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.55-58
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• 2008

Hydroforming is a forming technology in which a steel tube is set in a die and formed to fit a specified shape by applying hydraulic pressure from inside the tube while also applying force in the tube axial direction (axial feed). In present study, the entire design process chain for an automotive cross-member was simulated and developed using hydroforming technology on high-strength steel. The part design stage required a feasibility study. The process was designed using computer-aided design techniques to confirm the actual hydroformability of the part in detail. The possibility of using hydroformable cross-member parts was examined using cross-sectional analyses, which were essential to ensure the formability of the tube material for each forming step, including pre-bending and hydroforming. The die design stage included all the components of a prototyping tool. Press interference was investigated in terms of geometry and thinning.