An Approach to Improve Thickness Uniformity of TA15 Tubular Part Formed by Gas Bulging Process
Gas bulging with local-stretching preforming is presented to form titanium alloy tubular part with small radius. In ordinary gas bulging process, local thinning occurs at the corners with small radius and produces dangerous position of the component. In the paper, a preforming process so-called local-stretching is applied before gas bulging. Finite element simulation and experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the preforming and gas bulging process for the tubular component of titanium alloy TA15. During the local-stretching preforming, the material near the corner was kept almost rigid, but the material far away from the corner experienced stretching deformation and thickness thinning. Then, during gas bulging, the material near the corner experienced thinning deformation. So, the thickness uniformity of the final component was improved effectively.