Effect of internal pressure on strength of hydraulically expanded joints

To analyze the effect of internal pressure on the connection strength of hydraulically expanded joints,a hydraulic expanding and push-out process of a joint of tube to sleeve was simulated by using FEM and validated by experiments at various internal pressure values.The stress and residual stress in the joined pair during the joining process illustrates that the contact pressure on the interface is not uniform along the longitudinal direction.The research reveals that if the sleeve does not experience any plastic deformation,the connection strength increases with the internal pressure linearly.For sleeve material with yield point elongation,if the sleeve experiences some degree of plastic deformation,there is an internal pressure interval in which the connection strength decreases slightly as internal pressure increases.Therefore,the internal pressure should be controlled depending on the deformation of the sleeve,but not as high as possible.The simulated results are in good agreement with those from experiments.