Research on Hydraulic Push-Pull Bending Process of Ultra-Thin-Walled Tubes

Due to their high strength, high performance, and lightweight characteristics, bent tubes are widely used in many high-end industries, such as aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, automobile, and petrochemical industries. Ultra-thin-walled (thickness-to-diameter ratio t/D < 0.01) bent tubes are more prone to wrinkling, fracture, and cross-section distortion than ordinary bent tubes, which are difficult to form integrally by traditional bending processes. In this paper, a new bending process with combined loading of hydraulic pressure, push, and pull was proposed to provide a new method for the bending of ultra-thin-walled tube. This process is characterized by the ability to optimize the combination of push, pull, and internal pressure according to the actual bending process in order to minimize the wrinkling of ultra-thin-walled tube during bending. Based on ABAQUS finite element (FE) software, the FE model of the hydraulic push-pull bending process for ultra-thin-walled tube was established. The influence of internal pressure, die clearance, and friction coefficient on the forming quality of bent tubes was discussed, and the optimum process parameters were obtained. Bent tubes with an initial thickness of 0.3 mm, diameter of 60 mm, and bending radius of 165 mm were manufactured in experiments. Through the comparative analysis of experiment and simulation, the accuracy of the FE simulation was verified.