Expansion of oval tubes: prediction and experiment

The manufacturing of oval tubes for automotive components from sheets consists of several steps, from the flat sheet to a tube with expanded ends. It involves roll-bending of tubes, welding and several expansion processes with segmented tools. Forming steps in this process are subject to springback after the release of tools. Finite-element-simulations offer an efficient method to predict the springback behavior. For the industrial application it is important to identify the processes which contribute significantly to springback. At first glance one might expect that the consideration of the whole process chain is required to predict the final shape of such tubes. It turns out, that springback is related to the later stages of the process. The difference in springback behavior of circular and oval tubes is investigated. A simulation model is validated on the basis of experiments for circular tubes and applied to predict the final shape of oval tubes. This offers the perspective to adjust the tooling design at an earlier design stage to respect all the influences in the process on the final geometry and therefore meet tighter tolerances.