Numerical investigation of the incremental tube forming process

As a response to the recent years' growing demand for innovation in manufacturing processes towards lightweight design in several industrial sectors, a new process, called Incremental Tube Forming (ITF), and a corresponding machine layout have been developed. ITF is a process to manufacture bent tubes with varying cross-sections. During ITF a tube is clamped in a feeding device, which transports the tube through a spinning tool, where the diameter reduction takes place. This stage is followed by a superposed bending process without suppressing continuous feeding. This combination leads to various advantages such as improved tool life with reduced tool forces and improved product accuracy (e.g. springback behavior), as it is shown in various experimental works. This paper presents a complementary numerical treatment of the process using FEA. For this purpose, a 3D model is constructed using ABAQUS/Explicit, where the tube is modeled with conventional shell elements with uniformly reduced integration to avoid shear and membrane locking (S4R), whereas the spinning rolls are modeled as discrete rigid. With this model, the influences of process parameters, such as diameter reduction ratio and tool geometry, are investigated. This helps not only to gain a deeper understanding of the process but also to interpret already gathered experimental data with better precision and, thus establishing a basis for further improvement and optimization of this fairly new process.