Evaluation of effect of flow stress characteristics of tubular material on forming limit in tube hydroforming process

The material properties for the analytical and numerical simulation in sheet metal processes, especially in tube hydroforming process, are generally obtained from the uniaxial tensile test of raw sheet material. However, the validation of the formability and reliability of the numerical simulation for the tube hydroforming process arises from the fact that the material characteristics of tubes are different from those of the raw sheet materials. In order to determine the most suitable material property of the tubular material for the evaluation of forming limit on the THF process, the uniaxial tensile test for the specimens of the raw sheet metal and the roll-formed tube and the free bulge test for the roll-formed tubular material are carried out in this paper. The forming limit curves are also derived using plastic instability based on three kinds of necking criteria, which are Hill’s local necking criterion for sheet and Swift’s diffuse necking criteria for sheet and tube, to describe and explain the forming limits for the roll-formed tubular material in the THF process. In order to acquire the informative data on the forming limit curves in the THF process, the loading condition of the free bulge test is controlled. The proper band from nearly necking initiation to nearly bursting initiation has been defined for the roll-formed tubular material in the THF process. It can be concluded that the flow stress of the tubular material should be determined from the actual free bulge test to find the practically valuable forming limit curve for the THF process.