Examination of tailored preforms produced by rotary swaging for subsequent hydroforming

Components with large cross section differences and complex geometries are not or only hardly produceable using conventional hydroforming processes at room temperature. In order to overcome this difficulty, the combination with other forming processes is promising. In the present paper a process chain consisting of rotary swaging followed by a subsequent hydroforming is examined. Local material data such as flow stress and forming limits of the preform are characterized. Kinematic hardening is found out to be the predominant material behavior. Hence, appropriate control curves for hydroforming were designed via locally assigned material data in numerical simulations. A complex geometry is thus formed with the presented process chain. It is shown that high forming ratios of preformed areas are achievable when compressive stress is superimposed by axial feeding.