An Investigation on Forming and Fracture Behavior of Austenitic Stainless Steel Tubes

Tube hydroforming (THF) is an unconventional manufacturing technique that uses pressurized fluid in place of conventional punches to deform the tubular blank into the desired shape. In THF process tubular blank is deformed it into the final shape by applying fluid pressure mostly by water using water intensifier through axial punches. Tube hydroforming is mainly used to produce hollow components using tubular blank which find applications in automobile industry, particularly for exhaust systems. The formability of Austenitic stainless steel tubes as function of microstructure is not focused much in literature. Hence, in this study, formability of Austenitic stainless steel tubes is studied as a function of boundary conditions and bulge width (L/D ratio) and correlated with microstructure. Microstructure resulting in axial feed condition showed better formability than microstructure resulting in fixed feed condition. Similarly, formability and fracture behavior of tube predicted with finite element-based simulation using PAMPSTAMP 2G solver found results, particularly bulge height and fracture location are in good agreement with experimental values. The observed fracture mode noted was ductile both for axial feed condition and fixed feed condition as the fracture consists of voids and micro voids. Fracture location was in base metal just, besides, weld line for axial feed condition and fracture location was in base metal which is little away from weld line for fixed feed condition.