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Numerical simulation and experimental study on two-stage flow forming for thin-walled tubular parts with deep longitudinal outer ribs

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Abstract

Thin-walled tubular parts with longitudinal ribs are important lightweight components. To manufacture the complex shape, incremental forming processes like flow forming are increasingly used. However, it is still difficult to form deep longitudinal ribs by conventional flow forming like ball spinning (BS). This paper proposes a novel flow forming process named two-stage flow forming (TSFF) to manufacture the thin-walled tubular parts with deep longitudinal outer ribs. The TSFF process includes two forming stages of preforming and final forming. During the preforming stage, the balls make axially feed movement, which force the metal to flow radially, and preform the longitudinal outer ribs. In the final forming process, the balls make axial feed movement and the blank makes rotation, which forces the metal to flow along circumferential and radial direction. Thus, the wall thickness is reduced, and the deep longitudinal outer ribs are formed. Based on numerical simulation, the forming geometrical dimension by BS and TSFF is compared, and the forming effect of TSFF is better. To make further analysis of metal flow behavior, it can be found that TSFF promotes the metal to flow along tangential and radial direction, while restraining the axial flow of the metal, and finally improve the filling effect of the longitudinal outer ribs. In addition, the key process parameters of TSFF were studied, and it was found that the reduction of preforming and ball diameter had great influence on the filling effect of the outer ribs. Finally, the TSFF experiment is carried, and the result shows that thin-walled tubular parts with deep longitudinal outer ribs formed by TSFF are feasible. This study provides theoretical and experimental support for the development of the novel flow forming process.

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Data availability

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Funding

This research work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Project (2019YFB1704500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51805391), 111 Project(B17034), the Innovative Research Team Development Program of Ministry of Education of China (IRT_17R83), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51902096), and the Hubei Key Research and Development Project (2021BAA019) for the supports given to this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Jiadong Deng & Tian Yuan

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Yapeng Liu, Dongsheng Qian & Huajie Mao

  3. Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Automotive Components, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070, Wuhan, China

    Jiadong Deng, Dongsheng Qian & Huajie Mao

  4. Hubei Engineering Research Center for Green & Precision Material Forming, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Jiadong Deng, Dongsheng Qian & Huajie Mao

  5. Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Green Materials for Light Industry, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, 430068, China

    Yanhua Zhang

Authors
  1. Jiadong Deng
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  2. Tian Yuan
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  3. Yapeng Liu
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  4. Dongsheng Qian
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  5. Huajie Mao
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  6. Yanhua Zhang
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Contributions

Deng Jiadong conceived the idea of the study and analyzed most of the data. Tian Yuan and Yapeng Liu wrote the paper and simulations. Dongsheng Qian and Huajie Mao provide the guidance of experimental implementation and provide correction schemes for process mold design. Yanhua Zhang mainly undertook the work of experiment implementation process and data analysis. All the authors discussed the results and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huajie Mao.

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Deng, J., Yuan, T., Liu, Y. et al. Numerical simulation and experimental study on two-stage flow forming for thin-walled tubular parts with deep longitudinal outer ribs. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 125, 2517–2533 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-10870-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-023-10870-y

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