Working Limit of Aluminum Extruded Square Tubes
on Bending with Wiper Die

Abstract

Aluminum alloy sections have broad applications such as in general structures and automotive components. Owing to the increasing complexity of such components, there is an increasing demand for highly curved thin-walled sections. Therefore, reliable bending processes are required to manufacture such components without undesirable deformations such as wrinkling and folding, during bending. To prevent undesirable deformations and predict when they may occur, it is necessary to generate a significant amount of data from various forming configurations in which process parameters are varied. In this paper, we concentrated on the problem of bending square section thin-walled tubes and used finite element analysis to generate the data required for the prediction of working limits. Four different tube materials (A6063S-O, A6063S-T5, A6061S-O and A6061S-T6) were used to investigate the relationship between deformation behavior and material properties. Subsequently, the effect of using a wiper die on the working limit of extruded aluminum sections was investigated. The working limit was improved using a wiper die.