Investigation on formability enhancement of 5A06 aluminium sheet by impact hydroforming

High strain rate (HSR) forming has been found to be able to enhance the formability of sheet metals like electro-magnetic forming. Impact hydroforming (IHF) is proposed, in which the sheet is formed with high-pressure pulse combining hydroforming and HSR forming. An IHF bulge test setup was designed, 5A06 aluminium sheet was tested with strain rate of 2 × 103 s−1 showing remarkable thickness strain increase compared with quasi-static condition. A new IHF equipment is designed, the IHF process was verified effective with the equipment, complicated aluminium aircraft sheet part with high drawing ratio was formed that cannot be formed with quasi-static hydroforming.