Finite element analysis on neck-spinning process of tube at elevated temperature

Abstract

Tube spinning process is a metal forming process used in the manufacture of axisymmetric products and has been widely used in various applications. Finite element analysis has been successfully applied to the tube spinning processes, but no temperature effects have been considered on neck-spinning. For this reason, the aim of this research is to investigate numerically the neck-spinning process of a tube at elevated temperature. The commercial software Abaqus/Explicit was adopted in the simulation. For the construction of the material model, special uniaxial tensile tests were conducted at elevated temperature and various strain rates, since the material is sensitive to strain rates at high temperature. Comparisons between experimental and simulation results on thickness distribution and the outer contour of the spun tube are discussed. During the final stage, the average deviations between the simulation and experiment were 10.65% in thickness and 3.03% in outer contour. Good agreement was found between experimental and simulation results. The influence of the coefficient of friction, roller translation speeds, and the tip radius of the rollers were also investigated through numerical simulation.