Forming characteristics of thin-walled tube bending process with small bending radius

Currently requirements of thin-walled tube with small bending radius cause the defects such as wrinkling, overthinning and cross-section distortion more prone to occur in bending process. Based on the analysis of the forming characteristics by analytical and experimental methods, a complete 3D elastic-plastic FEM model of the process was developed using ABAQUS/Explicit code, including bending process, balls retracting and unloading process, and thus the plastic deformation characteristics with small bending radius were investigated. The main results show that: 1) The utmost deformation feature of the NC bending process is its continuous progressive deformation. 2) The occurring conditions of the defects such as wrinkling and tension instability in the process are obtained. The wrinkling is traditional on the double compressive stresses state and the tension instability is on the double tension stresses state. 3) The enhanced non-uniform deformation in thin-walled tube with small bending radius is demonstrated by comparing the stress/ strains distributions under the 1.5D and 1D bending conditions. 4) For ID small bending process, a new method-'stepped mandrel retraction' is proposed to improve the bending quality in experiment according to the FE simulation. The simulation results are verified by experiment.

FE SIMULATION OF CENTER CRACK OCCURRENCE IN TUBE ROUNDS DURING TWO-ROLL ROTARY ROLLING PROCESS

With the aid of FE （finite element） code MSC.Superform 2005, 2-D coupled thermo-mechanical simulation of center-crack occurrence in round billet during 2-roll rotary rolling process was presented using Oyane ductile fracture criteria. A simple modeling is put forward based on the spiral motion of the workpiece as an essential characteristic in movement. The influence of the feed angle and the entry cone angle of the main roll on the process was taken into account in the modeling. The soundness for simplifying the 3-D rotary rolling into a 2-D problem was discussed. By adopting the parameters of Diescher piercer in 140mm mandrel mill of Bao Steel, the distribution and development of strain/stress were analyzed, and the eigen value of ductile fracture as well. The critical percentage of diameter reduction was obtained from the simulation. The result showed a good agreement with the experimental value, and therefore was of widely guiding significance to the practical process for rationally formulating the deformation parameters of steel tube piercing.

Explicit FE wrinkling simulation and method to catch critical bifurcation point in tube bending process

The wrinkling has become the main defect in the thin-walled tube NC bending process. In the study, a dynamic explicit FE model for aluminum alloy thin-walled tube NC bending process is developed to predict the wrinkling by using FE code ABAQUS/Explicit. Attention was paid to the influences of mass scaling, loading rate scaling, mesh density and element type on accurate wrinkling prediction. So the wrinkling modes and mechanism are revealed based on the reliable FE model. Then a two step strategy is proposed to capture the critical bifurcation point for the optimal design process. The results show: 1) The boundary conditions determine the tube materials response greatly so that the frequency analysis is meaningless to the simulation. It is the contact conditions that make the effect of the mass scaling and loading rate less significant.2) There are two wrinkling modes in the tube bending process. One refers to that local ripples occur initially in the straight regions contacted with wiper die and mandrel; the other refers to that local wrinkles occur in the curved regions due to the relative slipping between tube and clamp die. 3) Both the difference of the in-plane compressive stresses and the relative slipping distance are chosen to be the quantitative indexes to represent the critical point and wrinkling tendency. The experiment of aluminum alloy (5052 O) tube bending was carried out to verify whether the above wrinkle modes exist and the indexes proposed are reasonable to catch the critical bifurcation point. The results may help better understanding of the wrinkling mechanism and the process optimization of the tube bending.