＜正＞ The numerical control （NC） precision bending process of thin-walled tube is one of advanced plastic formin...
ZHAN Mei, YANG He, JIANG Zhi-qiang, ZHAO Zhen-song, LIN Yan(1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University,Xi’an 710072, China
The wrinkling has become the main defect in the thin-walled tube NC bending process. In the study, a dynamic explicit FE model for aluminum alloy thin-walled tube NC bending process is developed to predict the wrinkling by using FE code ABAQUS/Explicit. Attention was paid to the influences of mass scaling, loading rate scaling, mesh density and element type on accurate wrinkling prediction. So the wrinkling modes and mechanism are revealed based on the reliable FE model. Then a two step strategy is proposed to capture the critical bifurcation point for the optimal design process. The results show: 1) The boundary conditions determine the tube materials response greatly so that the frequency analysis is meaningless to the simulation. It is the contact conditions that make the effect of the mass scaling and loading rate less significant.2) There are two wrinkling modes in the tube bending process. One refers to that local ripples occur initially in the straight regions contacted with wiper die and mandrel; the other refers to that local wrinkles occur in the curved regions due to the relative slipping between tube and clamp die. 3) Both the difference of the in-plane compressive stresses and the relative slipping distance are chosen to be the quantitative indexes to represent the critical point and wrinkling tendency. The experiment of aluminum alloy (5052 O) tube bending was carried out to verify whether the above wrinkle modes exist and the indexes proposed are reasonable to catch the critical bifurcation point. The results may help better understanding of the wrinkling mechanism and the process optimization of the tube bending.
Numerical control(NC) bending experiments with different process parameters were carried out for 5052O aluminum alloy tubes with outer diameter of 70 mm, wall thickness of 1.5 mm, and centerline bending radius of 105 mm. And the effects of process parameters on tube wall thinning and cross section distortion were investigated. Meanwhile, acceptable bending of the 5052O aluminum tubes was accomplished based on the above experiments. The results show that the effects of process parameters on bending process for large diameter thin-walled aluminum alloy tubes are similar to those for small diameter thin-walled tubes, but the forming quality of the large diameter thin-walled aluminum alloy tubes is much more sensitive to the process parameters and thus it is more difficult to form.
