MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF T SHAPED TUBE HYDROFORMING PROCESS

Tube Hydroforming is a process of forming closed-section, hollow parts with different crosssections by applying combined internal hydraulic forming pressure and end axial compressive loads or feeds to force a tubular blank to conform to the shape of a given die cavity. It is one of the most advanced metal forming processes and is ideal for producing seamless, lightweight, near net shape components.. This innovative manufacturing process offers several advantages over conventional manufacturing processes such as part consolidation, weight reduction and lower tooling and process cost. To increase the implementation of this technology in different manufacturing industries, dramatic improvements for hydroformed part design and process development are imperative. The current design and development of tube Hydroforming processes is plagued with long design and prototyping lead times of the component. The tube Hydroforming process is a relatively complex manufacturing process; the performance of this process depends on various factors and requires proper combination of part design, material selection and boundary conditions. Due to the complex nature of the process, the best method to study the behavior of the process is by using numerical techniques and advanced explicit finite element (FE) codes. In this work-branch components were formed using a tube Hydroforming In this work, T-branch components were formed using a tube Hydroforming. the processes were simulated using ANSYS AUTODYN explicit FEcode using the same experimental boundary, loading conditions and the simulation results were compared with the Commercial available component.