Finite element analysis of tube drawing process with diameter expansion

This paper presents a tube drawing process with diameter expansion for producing a thin-walled tube effectively. In this proposed process, the tube was flared by a plug pushing into the tube, and then the tube was expanded by drawing the plug in the tube axial direction with chucking the flared tube edge. Optimum plug shape, such as the plug half angle and the corner radius, was investigated by a series of analyses using the finite element method (FEM) for improving the forming limit and the dimension accuracy. At first, a friction coefficient was determined to 0.3 by a comparison of the flaring limit between the analysis and the experiment of the tube flaring. As a result of the analyses in the drawing with the diameter expansion, the forming limit was high when the plug half angle was set to 18~30°. The thickness reduction ratio increased with an increase in the expansion ratio and the plug half angle. In addition, the overshoot, which is a difference between the plug diameter and the tube inner diameter after the drawing, was prevented by using the plug with the corner radius of 20 mm

Finite element analysis of tube drawing process with diameter expansion

This paper presents a tube drawing process with diameter expansion for producing a thin-walled tube effectively. In this proposed process, the tube was flared by a plug pushing into the tube, and then the tube was expanded by drawing the plug in the tube axial direction with chucking the flared tube edge. Optimum plug shape, such as the plug half angle and the corner radius, was investigated by a series of analyses using the finite element method (FEM) for improving the forming limit and the dimension accuracy. At first, a friction coefficient was determined to 0.3 by a comparison of the flaring limit between the analysis and the experiment of the tube flaring. As a result of the analyses in the drawing with the diameter expansion, the forming limit was high when the plug half angle was set to 18~30°. The thickness reduction ratio increased with an increase in the expansion ratio and the plug half angle. In addition, the overshoot, which is a difference between the plug diameter and the tube inner diameter after the drawing, was prevented by using the plug with the corner radius of 20 mm

Tube Drawing Process with Diameter Expansion for Effectively Reducing Thickness

The present paper describes a tube drawing method with diameter expansion, which is herein referred to as “expansion drawing”, for effectively producing thin-walled tube. In the proposed method, the tube end is flared by pushing a plug into the tube, and the tube is then expanded by drawing the plug in the axial direction while the flared end is chucked. The forming characteristics and effectiveness of the proposed method were investigated through a series of finite element method (FEM) analyses and experiments. As a result of FEM analysis, the expansion drawing effectively reduced the tube thickness with a smaller axial load when compared with the conventional method. According to the experimental results, the thin-walled tube was produced successfully by the expansion drawing. Maximum thickness reduction ratios for a carbon steel (STKM13C) and an aluminum alloy (AA1070) were 0.15 and 0.29 when the maximum expansion ratios were 0.23 and 0.31, respectively. The above results suggest that the proposed expansion drawing method is effective for producing thin-walled tubes