On the characteristics of tubular materials for hydroforming—experimentation and analysis

Increasing acceptance and use of hydroforming technology within the automotive industry demands a comprehensive understanding of related issues such as material characteristics, tribology, part and tooling design. Among these issues, characterization and specification of tubular material properties under hydroforming conditions is the main concern of this paper. Analytical improvements and their comparison with experimental findings on measurement of material properties of tubes under hydraulic bulging conditions are explained. With these improvements, ‘on-line’ and continuous measurement of flow stress for tubular materials become possible, and are proven to be in good agreement with previous ‘off-line’ measurements presented by the authors.