Numerical and experimental study on sheet hydroforming of 2A12 aluminum alloy

In this paper, the sheet hydroforming process of 2A12 aluminum alloy with uniform die cavity pressure on to the blank is proposed and investigated both primarily through the finite element method (FEM) and experiments. The influence of the die cavity pressure curve on the quality of the products was explored and the measures to promote the sheet formability were discussed. The results from the studied case indicate that the profile of the cavity pressure was one of the fundamental parameters directly related to the product's quality and precision. Excessive or insufficient initial pressure is not conducive for the reduction of wall thickness thinning and guarantee of wall thickness uniformity. And the wall thickness thinning is reduced and the thickness evenness is improved by increasing the maximum cavity pressure within a proper range. Moreover, an optimum cavity pressure curve generated by the numerical and experimental methods was properly applied in forming the aluminum alloy part without rupture and with slight wrinkle in the flange area. The study demonstrates that the results of simulations based on the identified parameters were in reasonable agreement with those from experiments.