Numerical analysis of tube-blank boundary conditions in the tube-compression by viscous pressure forming

Due to the influence of compression instability, buckling and wrinkling are prone to occur in tube-compression process, especially for the thin-wall parts, which restricts the applications of tube-compression. At the same time tube-blank boundary condition is one of the important influence factors in the tube-compression process by VPF. Then the investigation on the influence of tube-blank boundary conditions on stabilization of tube-compression by VPF is very significant. In this article the cylindrical shell's stress with different boundary conditions of cylindrical shells is examined firstly. Subsequently, using the ANSYS Academic Research code for elastic-plastic deformations of cylindrical shells of different boundary conditions, the distributions of stress and stain and the post-buckling paths for the cylindrical shell are investigated. The results show that the wrinkling in the tube-compression process by VPF can be removed when confined the ends of the cylindrical shells. This can be used for design purposes.