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Experimental and numerical study of the flaring process for Zircaloy tube end

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Abstract

The tube flaring process has been traditionally used to expand one end of a tube without changing its cross-sectional area. This process can be achieved by driving a rigid conical punches or arc profile punches with various diameters inserting into the tube end either mechanically or hydraulically, to obtain desirable expansion ratios. In this study, taking the Zircaloy-4 tubes with different textures as the samples, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element model is established to simulate the process of flaring and the reliability of the model has been validated by experiments. Via an integration method using the subroutine Vumat in the Abaqus/Explicit platform, the effect of punch parameter (E) on the forming quality of flared tube has been revealed. Besides, the analyses for the flaring load, wall thickness variation, stress–strain path, and texture evolution are also carried out via the experimentation and simulation. It is observed that the tube flared by the punch with E = 2.0 has a lower wall-thinning ratio so that the higher formability is achieved. To prevent the local bulking during flaring, the value of E with the range of 0 to 2.5 is reasonable. Furthermore, the relationship between strain ratio and texture evolution is constructed.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Analytical & Testing Center of Northwestern Polytechnical University for TEM testing.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51771150), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFB0701303), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2018JM5174).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Xufeng Wang, Xiaoyu Huang, Xiangyi Xue, Bin Tang, Hongchao Kou & Jinshan Li

  2. Western Energy Material Technologies Co., Ltd, Xi’an, 710299, China

    Xufeng Wang, Haiqin Zhang, Jun Zhou & Haiming Liu

  3. Chongqing Innovation Center, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Chongqing, 401135, China

    Xiaoyu Huang, Bin Tang, Hongchao Kou & Jinshan Li

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  1. Xufeng Wang
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  2. Xiaoyu Huang
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  3. Xiangyi Xue
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  4. Haiqin Zhang
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  5. Jun Zhou
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  9. Jinshan Li
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Contributions

Wang Xufeng: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing-original draft, writing—review and editing; Huang Xiaoyu: conceptualization, supervision, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition; Xue Xiangyi: conceptualization, methodology, supervision; Zhang Haiqin: methodology, investigation; Zhou Jun: formal analysis; Liu Haiming: investigation, formal analysis; Tang Bin: funding acquisition; Kou Hongchao: conceptualization, methodology; Li Jinshan: conceptualization, methodology.

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Correspondence to Xufeng Wang or Xiaoyu Huang.

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Wang, X., Huang, X., Xue, X. et al. Experimental and numerical study of the flaring process for Zircaloy tube end. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 126, 2219–2232 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-11174-x

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