Fundamentals of the incremental tube forming process

The manufacture of bent tubes made of high-strength materials requires high bending loads, which lead to large springback and eventually distortion of the cross-section. The incremental tube forming process allows significant reduction of the bending moment. This is achieved by combining the continuous bending process with an incremental tube spinning process. The paper describes an analytical model to predict the bending moment reduction as a function of the superposed spinning process parameters. Experimental results are provided to validate the theoretical results. This model allows the design and optimization of the incremental tube forming process with low springback.