Design and optimisation of mandrel parameters for thin walled aluminium alloy tube NC bending

Abstract

How to design and optimise mandrel parameters to improve forming quality has become a key problem for thin walled aluminium alloy tube NC bending. Therefore, in this paper, the design and optimisation method of the mandrel parameters is proposed based on finite element simulation. It is applied to two specifications of thin walled aluminium alloy tube NC bending, and the results are verified by the experiments, which show that the proposed method is reliable.

Keywords:

• Mandrel parameters
• Design
• Optimisation
• FE simulation
• Thin walled aluminium alloy tube
• NC bending

The author would like to thank the National Science Foundation of China (grant no. 50905144 and no. 50875216), State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology (grant no. 09‐10) and NPU Foundation for Fundamental Research (grant no. JC201028) for the support to this research.