Prediction of wrinkle types in tube hydroforming under pulsating hydraulic pressure with axial feeding

Abstract

Wrinkling frequently occurs in tube hydroforming, resulting in an undesirable loss of quality and precision of the formed workpiece, and is generally regarded as a defect. However, wrinkling can also be utilised to improve the formability of tubular materials if it can be gradually reduced or even flattened in the follow-up tube hydroforming. For this reason, wrinkling is classified into two types—harmful wrinkle and useful wrinkle. In this paper, two prediction methods, geometry-based prediction method and mechanics-based prediction method, are proposed to predict the wrinkle type occurring in tube hydroforming under pulsating hydraulic pressure with axial feeding. Then, the corresponding tube hydroforming experiments are presented, which were carried out to validate the two proposed prediction methods by comparing the deformation and wrinkling behaviours. Finally, the characteristics of the two approaches are compared and discussed. The results indicate that the wrinkle type occurring in the present tube hydroforming experiments under pulsating hydraulic pressure with axial feeding could be predicted by both prediction methods, with the geometry-based prediction method providing more accuracy than the mechanics-based prediction method.