The objective of this study is to construct the forming rule for hourglass-like tube with magnesium alloy during hydro-forming and offer the analysis results as a guideline for magnesium alloy forming in industry. AZ31 magnesium alloy circular tube is used as the billet material for hydro-forming with hydraulic pressure as the main forming power combined with the mechanical auxiliary force from the punch to fabricate the hourglass-like tubing products. A finite element based code is utilized to investigate the forming characteristics of hourglass-like tube forming, by changing process parameters such as punch velocity, hydraulic pressure gradient and tool-workpiece interface friction etc. to investigate the material flow of tube filling, wall thickness variations, and stress and strain distributions. And the abductive network is in turn applied to synthesize the data sets obtained from the numerical simulations. Consequently, a quantitative prediction model is developed for the relationships among the process variables, corner radius and minimum tube thickness in the process of hourglass-like tube hydro-forming with magnesium alloy. The results show that proper mechanical force can help material flow, prevent large strain deformation from falling into the area of negative strain hardening rate, enhance the magnesium alloy to become easy in forming and make tube fitting may to be formed successfully.
Fracture and springback on Double Bulge Tube Hydro-Forming
