A state of the art review of hydroforming technology

Abstract

Hydroforming is a relatively new metal forming process with many advantages over traditional cold forming processes including the ability to create more complicated components with fewer operations. For certain geometries, hydroforming technology permits the creation of parts that are lighter weight, have stiffer properties, are cheaper to produce and can be manufactured from fewer blanks which produces less material waste. This paper provides a detailed survey of the hydroforming literature of both established and emerging processes in a single taxonomy. Recently reported innovations in hydroforming processes (which are incorporated in the taxonomy) are also detailed and classified in terms of “technology readiness level”. The paper concludes with a discussion on the future of hydroforming including the current state of the art techniques, the research directions, and the process advantages to make predictions about emerging hydroforming technologies.

Optimization of Process Parameters during Hydroforming of Tank Bottom using NSGA-III Algorithm

“…Although the hydroforming process parameters of the storage tank's bottom are optimized, and achieved some research results, there is still some work remains to be further studied： (1) The four objective functions, including biggest wall thickness reduction ratio, cracking factor, height of flange wrinkling, wrinkling factor, represent wrinkling and cracking defects. However, the springback defect also occurs in SHF, and this defect needs to be studied for that storage tank's bottom requires high reliability (2) The study of fluid pressure and pre-bulging pressure is based on the linear loading path.…”

“…SHF uses liquid as the mold, which greatly simplifies mold structure and reduces production costs. It has been highly recognized and widely concerned in the stamping industry [1]. Nevertheless, due to the large size and thin wall of the storage tank's bottom (ratio of thickness to diameter equals <3‰), wrinkling is induced by plastic instability in the forming of integral storage tank's bottom.…”

On the thinning variations in hydrostatic forming of sheet metal

“…Hydrostatic forming technology is one of the most emerging technologies that can be applied into manufacturing a lot of products in automobile and aerospace industries [9][10][11]. In this technology, the product is shaped in accordance with the die profile by a high liquid pressure source as shown in Figure 1.…”

Conductive Heating during Press Hardening by Hot Metal Gas Forming for Curved Complex Part Geometries

“…However, when realizing complex components, the use of tubular or profile shaped semi-finished parts frequently allows replacing several sheet metal parts in total, leading to lower material use and consequently resulting in lower weight and high component stiffness. Hydroforming is a suitable technology here [7]. At the same time, joining operations can be eliminated from the process chain so that often the result is a shorter and more cost-efficient process chain, see [8], where complex titanium parts are superplastically formed by HMGF in such a way that complex manufacturing with several joining operations can be saved.…”