Numerical and experimental study of two-layered tube forming by hydroforming process

Hydroforming is an advanced process in automotive and aerospace industries to form metal tubes into desired shapes by high pressure fluid. The formation of a two layered tubes has been investigated both numerically and experimentally by a pressurized fluid fed into the internal tube through a nonlinear path with no axial feeding. The experimental setup including two units of die clamping system and pressure intensification system has been designed and built in Tarbiat Modares University. The internal and external layers of hydroformed tubes are used aluminum and copper alloys respectively. Effects of different friction conditions on tubes formability have been investigated. Finite element simulation is performed with LS-Dyna FE explicit code using ETA/Dynaform as the preprocessor. The simulation results show that the part can be formed successfully with the internal pressure of 61 MPa. The finite element results are in agreement with experimental results. It is also shown that imposing high friction condition for external tube and low friction condition for internal tube both will fail more likely.