Effect of initial thickness on shear bending process of circular tubes

Tube shear bending is a suitable technology to realize considerable small bending radii, which is very difficult to be achieved through common cold-bending processes. The authors have investigated the tube shear bending process experimentally. Moreover, an elasto-plastic 3D finite element simulation has been conducted aiming to analyze the forming process. In this paper, the effects of the initial thickness on the deformation characteristics of the tube shear bending have been investigated both by experiments and numerical simulation. In order to show the validity of simulation, the FEM results of the thickness strains as well as the cross section configurations of the deformed tube have been compared with the experimental ones. The results indicate that under the effect of same pushing pressure, raising the initial thickness, the tube thinning and cross section deformation increase.