<p>A sudden increase in the usage of automotive vehicles results in sudden increases in the fuel consumption which results in an increase in air pollution. To cope up with this challenge federal government is implying the stricter environmental regulation to decrease air pollution. To save from the environmental regulation penalty vehicle industry is researching innovation which would reduce vehicle weight and decrease the fuel consumption. Thus, the innovation related to light-weighting is not only an option anymore but became a mandatory necessity to decrease fuel consumption. To achieve this target, the industry has been looking at many innovative manufacturing processes like electric assisted manufacturing, single point incremental forming, high speed forming and many. All these innovative process promises more uniform deformation and increase formability in the part. One such process is tube hydroforming for tubular parts. Tube hydroforming is the successful manufacturing process to create a variety of shapes using fluid pressure. The fluid medium can be water with preventive additives, oil or viscous liquid. In this process, the tube was filled with the fluid medium and further pressurized to deform to various shapes. Tube hydroforming is categorized into three types: high pressure, pressure sequencing and low-pressure tube hydroforming. Ferrous and non-ferrous metals are formed using these processes. Due to uniform thinning in the formed part, the parts can be lower weight and thus proven to be the technology to create light-weight parts for automotive and aerospace industries to increase the fuel economy. Tube hydroforming has gained popularity due to its many advantages such as part consolidation, quality of the formed part and the possibility of unique shapes with indents or angles. This paper focuses on low-pressure tube hydroforming. In low-pressure tube hydroforming, during the closing of the die the tube is marginally pressurized to a fixed volume. The previous study which was published in IMECE2020 was focused on to investigate the effect of variation of thickness on deformation mechanics of the tube with variation in the process sequence during low-pressure tube hydroforming. In this part of the research, the study focus on how the speed of the die effect the deformation mechanics with variation of the process sequence during low-pressure tube hydroforming. The circular tube was formed in a square shape. The four sides of die edges were considered as individual edges and the motion of these edges will be varied to achieve the final shape. The deformation mechanics in each condition was presented and analyzed. The relative thickness and strain distribution were studied. The change of tube profile pattern from the start to the end of the process were presented and compared.</p>

Effect of Die Velocity on Tube Deformation Mechanics During Low Pressure Tube Hydroforming Process Sequence Variation

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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