Hydroforming process of thin-walled tubular components with multiple local bulges

In the hydroforming process of a thin-walled tubular component with multiple local bulges, the bulge in the middle position is almost impossible to be formed with a conventional one-step hydroforming process because of the difficult axial feeding. To solve this problem, a novel method is proposed by preforming wrinkles using selective induction heating at different positions of tube blank to aggregate materials in advance for the subsequent hydroforming of tubular component with multiple local bulges. In this paper, the wrinkling behavior of 5052 aluminum alloy tube blank under different conditions and the deformation behavior of the wrinkled tube blank in subsequent hydroforming process of tubular component with three bulges are analyzed. It is shown that the existence of wrinkles is beneficial to increase the ultimate expansion ratio of the tube blank. Moreover, the instability behavior of multiple wrinkles on 5052 aluminum alloy tube blanks under different conditions was investigated by experiments. The process parameters for prefabricating two or three wrinkles, including temperature, spacing between wrinkles, and internal pressure, were determined through a detailed experimental investigation. Finally, the defects including splitting and undercut that occur in the hydroforming of tubular component with three bulges are analyzed, and the thin-walled tubular component with three bulges was hydroformed successfully using a wrinkled tube blank obtained under the process parameters of 250 °C, 4 mm, 5.5 MPa/350 °C, 10 mm, 2 MPa/400 °C, 6 mm, 1.33 MPa. These results provide insights for the manufacturing of tubular component with multiple local bulges from hard-to-form materials.