Three Dimensional Finite Element Simulation andTheorical Investigation on the Forming Forces for ThreeRoller Flow Forming Process

Flow forming as a type of metal spinning processes is used in production of thin-walled high-precisiontubular components. Due to the flexibility and low tool load requirement, the process may be employedfor forming the mentioned shapes from bulk raw material, such as solid bars, cast or forged preforms.In the last two decades or so, flow forming has gradually matured as metal forming processes for theproduction of engineering components in small to medium batch quantities. The researches on the flowforming force aims to optimize the machine design and the processing parameters selection. However,studies on the flow forming of solid cylindrical components have not been documented. In this paper, asimulation model has been performed using the commercial finite element code ABAQUS/EXPLICITto study the internal and kinetic energy, radial, axial and tangential forces in a Three-roller flow formingprocess in one pass. The result show that, for a cylindrical roller moving axially along the work-piece,metal moves predominantly in a radial direction. The difficulties in simulating flow forming are outlinedand the model using different formulations are compared for their efficiency in analyzing the process.This paper illustrates the possibility of adopting flow-forming processes for the production of thinsection, which would be difficult and expensive to produce by press forming. In addition, it also showedthat although FEM is an effective tool to optimize process parameters, computational time remains asthe main barrier for its prevalent usage especially for incremental processes such as flow forming. Allstudies presented in this paper have been carried out on Aluminum alloy EN AW-۷۱۰۸ T۶.

Keywords:

Flow-Forming , Finite Element Simulation , Theorical Investigation , Three Roller , FormingForces , Aluminium Alloy EN AW-۷۱۰۸-T۶.