Numerical and experimental study on in-plane bending of microchannel aluminum flat tube

Microchannel aluminum flat tubes have attracted more and more attention in recent years, especially in ACR (air conditioning and refrigeration) industry. Rotary-draw bending is a versatile and precise method in forming of tubes. Compared with traditional out-of-plane bending method, in-plane bending can cause different forming defects. During the process, wall thinning, sectional distortion, wrinkling, and channel shape degradation are the main defects that affect tube quality in industrial applications. In this paper, an experimental apparatus for flat tube in-plane bending is manufactured, and experiments are performed to examine the forming quality of tubes. Considering the characteristics of the bending process, based on the LS-DYNA software environment, a 3D elastic–plastic finite element model is established and validated by experiment. Using the validated FE model, the forming quality of microchannel flat tube bending process is evaluated quantitively. Furthermore, the influence mechanism of process parameters, such as bending radius, tool–tube clearance, and channel diameter, has been revealed. The results indicate that the degradation of the tube channels is relatively small under common process conditions; bending radius is the main factor which influences the forming quality of the flat tube; the tool–tube clearance mainly affects the wrinkling of the flat tubes; channel diameter has little effect on the formability of tube.