Tube hydroforming process: A reference guide

Tube hydroforming is one of the most popular unconventional metal forming processes which is widely used to form various tubular components. By this process, tubes are formed into different shapes using internal pressure and axial compressive loads simultaneously to force a tubular blank to conform to the shape of a given die cavity. In this paper, an overall review of developments in the tube hydroforming study is presented so that other researchers at different parts of the world can use it for further investigations in this area. Initially, analytical studies which predict the sufficient parameters in tube hydroforming process were summarized. Afterwards, a guideline for employing finite element modeling (FEM) in the process analysis was proposed. Factors affecting the output of the process were addressed by many studies which were categorized and reviewed in the present work. Moreover, common types of failure of the process were introduced and improvements to avoid them were mentioned. Furthermore, different optimization algorithms to choose the input parameters that would produce the desired hydroformed component were outlined. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.