INVESTIGATION ON SHEET HYDROFORMING PROCESS OF TITANIUM/ALUMINUM CLAD METAL HOUSING

Abstract

In this research, the sheet hydroforming process (SHF) was adopted to form a Ti/Al clad metal housing with complex shape. Nowadays, SHF has been widely accepted for the production of components characterized by high surface quality, precise dimensional accuracy together with high drawing ratio. For investigating the formability of the Ti/Al clad metal housing through SHF, the concept of virtual film were developed with explicit finite element method. First, the simulation model was verified by comparing the deformation of the blank obtained from experiments. Through finite element simulations, several significant process parameters such as holding force, tooling geometry, blank dimensions, single-stage (with pre-bulging effect) and multi-stages SHF were analyzed for improving formability of the Ti / Al clad metal housing during SHF.