The Hydroforming Process Design Of An Automotive Part

Tube hydroforming (THF) is currently an active area of development in the automotive industry on account of its advantages it offers in comparison to other manufacturing processes. In this paper, four simulations were carried out having the same cross sectional area but different axial feeding and load paths to improve the process design in THF process, in order to help establish the feasibility of the THF processes for specific components and have the potential to reduce the number of forming trials required to standardize the process for production of high quality hydroforming components.In addition, the studies also focus on development of an experiment simulation procedures for the entire hydroforming process. The simulation results focus on the % reduction thickness. It has also focus on the axial feed and load paths which becomes an important and useful method for planning the process design analysis, design of forming process and also planning of the tool. Since they play an important role and also determine accordance of forming limits such as wrinkling, bursting and crushing .The geometry model is analyzed base on different axial load and load paths. The key issues include geometry modeling, materials selection, meshing, boundary conditions, load definition and contact between the tube and the dies.On the base of the simulation, an optimized process parameter combination has obtained and has been verified by the instrument panel frame hydroforming experiment. The works show that:a. The hydroforming of an automotive part requires proper selection of process parameters, i.e. the internal pressure and axial feeds.b. The combination of the internal pressure and axial feeds are crucial to the success of the hydroforming operation.c. In order to reduce the trial-and-error effort in the designing of the process parameters, FEA simulations can help to determine the "optimum" process parameters and predict the forming results, such as % thickness reduction, buckle or wrinkle.d. The designed process parameters through FEA simulation can be used in the real production, and the prediction results agree well with the experiment results.