End forming of thin-walled tubes

The term 'end forming of tubes' is commonly used to describe the production of simple or complex tube end shapes by means of a wide variety of processes such as expansion, reduction, inversion, flaring, flanging and tapering. This paper is the result of a numerical and experimental investigation on the field of expansion and reduction of thin-walled tubes using a die with the objective of dealing with existing gaps in knowledge related to the influence of process parameters on the formability limits induced by ductile fracture, wrinkling and local buckling. The numerical investigation is accomplished by the use of virtual prototyping modelling techniques based on the finite element method and the experimental investigation was performed on tubular components of AA6060 Aluminium alloy, under laboratory-controlled conditions with the purpose of supporting and validating the theoretical investigation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.