Development of design guidelines for part, tooling and process in the tube hydroforming technology

Abstract

Today, an increasing competition and environmental regulations force the automotive industry to produce lightweight cars for savings in fuel consumption.On the other hand, the automotive industry desires to manage this in a cost-effective manner.There are, however, only two ways to achieve that from the manufacturing point of view (1) Development of new materials or composites that provide light weight parts while keeping the same required strength specifications, and (2) Development and improvement of new manufacturing techniques to produce parts with high strength-toweight ratios.Tube hydroforming (THF) process, which is a relatively new technology of the second category, utilizes mainly fluid pressure and hollow blank material to produce complex shaped parts such as exhaust system pipes, side rails, engine cradles, camshafts, crankshafts, differential casings, support panels, etc. THF process provides consolidation