Influence of loading path on formability of 304 stainless steel tubes

Abstract

The loading path affects the metal formability remarkably in tube hydroforming, and it is also one of the research focuses. Recently, some scholars abroad proposed a new fluctuant hydraulic loading method, which can improve the formability of tubes in hydroforming. Related studies have shown that this new loading method can improve the tube formability, the distribution of deformation is more uniform and this is useful for avoiding excessive local thinning. In this paper, tube hydroforming experiments without axial feeding were carried out; the influences of the loading methods on formability of stainless steel tubes were studied. Through the comparison of the experimental results under the condition of monotonous increase loading and fluctuation hydraulic loading, the outside diameter distribution, the thickness distribution and the crack expansion forms of deformation zone all fully prove that the uniformity of the distribution of tube deformation and formability have been increased significantly under the condition of fluctuation loading without axial feeding, the reasons should be distinguished from the fluctuation hydroforming with axial feeding. In order to study the forming mechanism, uniaxial tensile test of tubes similar to fluctuation loading deformation is designed in this paper, namely intermittent tensile test. It is found that intermittent uniaxial stretch can improve the tube elongation at fracture by about 40% and the deformation distribution is more uniform than that through uniaxial tensile test of the stainless steel tube. In the process of intermittent tensile tests, changes of metal microstructures brought by the loading and unloading processes are the main reasons that improve the formability of the tubes.