Ghaffari Tari - M.Sc. Student, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Biglari - Associate professor, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Mashhadi Kashtiban - M.Sc. Student, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Azimi - Head of Technical Department, Toos Payvand Co., Tehran, Iran

Tube hydroforming is an innovative metal forming Process by which many near net shaped industrial parts can be manufactured. The finite element analysis is used as an effective tool for optimization of hydroforming processe. In this paper, a T-shape tube hydroforming process is simulated using the finite element method. The simulation was verified by experiments performed on T-shape tube hydroforming. The comparison shows a good agreement between two results. The internal pressure, material model and other important simulation parameters was obtained from experiments. By using design of experiment methodology number of experiments with different thickness and length settings of initial tube were suggested. In order to avoid costly experiments, the finite element simulation was used. Using the design of experiment analysis tools and analysis of variance (ANOVA) the effect of tube size on the protrusion height, branch top thickness reduction, thickness increase in central region of the part was investigated. The result suggests one of the combinations of thickness and length as the optimized initial configuration to obtain the desired product.

Finite Element Method, Tube hydroforming, parameter study, Design of experiment, Optimization, Taguchi